Wayland Smith said:Big safety pins. You can pin up clothing to imobilize limbs or pin a big cut!
As above, get your casualty out alive, and as clean as reasonably possible.
Sort everything out later.
Tseralo said:Wayland Smith said:Big safety pins. You can pin up clothing to imobilize limbs or pin a big cut!
As above, get your casualty out alive, and as clean as reasonably possible.
Sort everything out later.
Kilt pins work great for that.
I also have a blizzard blanket that will keep someone a lot warmer than the stanadrad tinfoil bag. The blanket is a lot easier to get around and under someone than trying to get them into a bag and can be closed up.
Brains said:Tablets etc are generally no good as first aid in a cave - the cool environment and body shut down with hypothermia means digesting / absorbing them is highly unlikely.
Mike Hopley said:If you have a profoundly hypothermic patient, then yes, they need to be handled delicately and I expect giving pills is a bad idea.
Mike Hopley said:A sachet of rehydration powder (Dioralyte) can make a huge difference. The transformative effect on severely dehydrated cavers has to be seen to be believed.
I've started packing the 20ml sterile saline pods as well as steristrips. Bivvi bag (do they still make the compact 250 gauge ones you could get from the likes of Caving Supplies?), space blanket, and gaffer tape (duct tape spelt differently), plasters, painkillers, and maybe a couple of wipes.- Sterile solution - washing out a gritty eye or general wound cleaning.
Subpopulus Hibernia said:Just opened up my mini-first aid kit for a look. I keep everything in a small nalgene bottle. I used to have an even smaller nalgene bottle but it was a bit too minimal (no room for duct tape) and the opening was so small I had to include a tweezers to pull the bits out of it.