"What If Survival"
What If Survival’s Premium First Aid Response Kit is an excellent first aid kit for those who ventures into the outdoors. Here’s how it stacks up to ABCs of trauma.
Airway
Airway emergencies include mouth swelling from allergic reactions, trauma, and an unconscious person’s floppy tongue which tends to fall backwards and block the throat. The included nasopharyngeal airway (NPA) is a flexible finger-sized tube which is slipped into the nose, providing a conduit for air to by-pass the mouth and enter the back of the throat. Including an NPA in this kit is a nice touch.
Breathing
If a victim’s breathing stops, bystanders should immediately begin CPR and give rescue breaths. The included CPR mask protects the rescuer from saliva, vomit, and blood, but don’t forget that hands-only-CPR is perfectly acceptable and the lack of a CPR mask should not prevent you from providing chest compressions to an unconscious, non-breathing victim.
Chest seal covering a penetrating chest wall injury.
Penetrating chest wounds are statistically unlikely during routine outdoor/camping activities, but if you recreate with firearms, it’s worthwhile to have one. Any penetrating chest wall injury, especially one that bubbles and gurgles, should be immediately covered with the included occlusive dressing. It would be a nice touch if the kit included a 4” needle for decompressing a tension pneumothorax as well, but that is lacking from this kit. Add one on your own from Chinook Medical to make the kit complete.
Circuation
Life threatening hemorrhage from penetrating injury is the number one killer on the battlefield, and this kit contains a tourniquet rubber banded to the outside of the bag and a package of Quick Clot to help stop bleeding. It also contains a large trauma dressing and an elastic bandage to make a compression dressing. Nice touch!
Quick Clot 4x4 bandage
Other good stuff
This is where the kit really shines. While it’s not much larger than an IFAK (improved first aid kit) issued by the military, it contains so much more good stuff that address wounds, orthopedic injuries, and it even has a few diagnostic instruments and tools. It’s selection of individually packaged “snivel meds” is well thought and apportioned for a few people at deer camp for a week. Most items are brand name, which is a plus.
My Overall Impression
While the kit does a nice job addressing the ABCs of trauma, there are few things that don’t make sense to me.
A chest seal could only be included for one reason: to address penetrating injury from firearms. However, any kit designed to address these kind of injuries should also have a 4” needle to decompress a tension pneumothorax.
Additionally, the kit contains steri-strips to close a wound, but I’ve applied thousands of steri-strips over the years and they just don’t stick well without skin adhesive, like tincture of benzoin or mastisol. And, if you’re going to close a wound, it should be thoroughly irrigated, but no irrigation device is included.
Pros
Awesome bag which velcro to a headrest in your truck
Addresses the ABCs of trauma
Brand name stuff
Cons
No skin adhesive for steri-strips
Cheap foil mylar blanket. Ever tried to cover someone with one of these? Replace it with a real bivy sack.
Includes a chest seal but no needle for tension pneumothorax decompression
I suggest this kit for:
Hunting camp
Shooting range
Overlanding vehicle
I do not suggest this kit for:
Backpacking
Extended stay camper, like a fifth wheeler
As a single kit for a large group or expedition
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