Scout Personal First Aid Kits

Although the Troop has comprehensive first aid kits on every trip, every scout should make it a habit to have a small personal first aid kit.  The focus of this kit should not be to handle major trauma, rather it should be designed to solve little personal problems that arise along the way.  That being said, a scout should never keep a medical problem to himself, especially on a high adventure trip, where minor problems like blisters can turn into trip ending major problems if not properly dealt with.  Counsel your scout to always let the adult leader know if he has a problem, even if he is perfectly capable of handling it himself and is doing so.  I do not recommend pre-made kits.  I think the right individual kit for a backpack is a heavy duty one quart zip-lock type bag.  In it, there should be a few band-aids, antiseptic pads (such as providone-iodine pads) some topical antibiotic ointment (like a triple antibiotic), some some hydrocortisone cream, a sheet of moleskin and a few sterile gauze pads.  Of course, adjust this for personal needs and allergies.  Remember that Second Class rank requirement 6B is to prepare a personal first aid kit to take with you on a hike, so your scout can do this for credit at the appropriate time.   For the antiseptics and topical meds, the best way to handle these are in little single use packages.  A big tube weighs too much.

This entry was posted on 16 November 2009 at 20:57 and is filed under Wilderness First Aid and other First Aid Topics., Outdoors & Scouts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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