Review: First Aid Kit from Survival Emergency Solutions

Neither of my kids had any blood injuries until about six months ago. Since then there’s been several trips to emergency, always at night or on a Sunday.

There’s also been split lips galore because a certain slippery someone likes to be a frog, usually when there’s water on the floor.

To treat these injuries we usually use an ad-hoc combination of tissues and random items we pick up from the pharmacy. We don’t actually have a dedicated first aid kit, which is something I’ve been thinking about as I plan a year of travel (more details coming soon, I promise).

So when the Australia-based Survival Emergency Solutions offered me a first aid kit to review, the timing seemed perfect.

We all waited patiently for the parcel to work its way through the notoriously slow Vietnamese customs system.

When it finally arrived, shipped from China, it was so exciting. The kids helped me unpack a big red square with FIRST AID stamped along one side.

We unzipped and unfolded and investigated all the pouches, and I began to feel slightly alarmed. Surely we’ll never need this stuff. I hope we’ll never need this stuff.

(Note the baby’s fat lip? He was being a frog in the slippery wet bathroom last night.)

I love the way each section is clearly marked. It appeals to my latent OCD tendencies.

The pocket labelled Eyepads (4) contains four eyepads. Brilliant, right?

There’s also helpful advice on some of the pockets, so you know the non-adherent wound dressings are for burns or abrasions, cotton gauze swabs are for wound cleaning, wound dressings are for major wounds and an emergency blanket is for shock and hypothermia.

There’s a small CPR kit that can be removed and used as a keychain, a removable zip-out section that can be used for day-to-day use, and a little first aid booklet.

A colour coding system, with the key on the back of the pack, means that pockets labeled in red are for trauma, pockets labeled in blue are for hygiene and pockets labeled in black are for utilities, such as splinter probes, tweezers, safety pins and fever scan strips.

There’s also QR codes on the outside of the kit to help with quick reordering.

The whole kit is incredibly well thought-out and logical. According to the Survival Emergency Solutions website, all their kits comply with Safe Work Australia’s Workplace Health and Safety Code of Practice, making them ideal for workplaces as well as homes.

Discovering all the bits and pieces was almost as exciting as getting a new set of school books, until I  focused on what these things are used for. I really hope we never had need of anything more than the small sticking plasters.

When I left Australia in 2007 my travel first aid kit was one-quarter of the size of this one, consisting of a few band-aids and prescription medicine. It’s virtually empty now, apart from expired packs of Malarone malaria medication and Tamiflu for bird flu.

My new Survival Emergency Solutions pack, which is a workplace or home first aid kit rather than a travel kit, is too bulky and heavy to cart around the world for a year.

We will take part of it, though, on our next big adventure. The zip-off section should be enough of a backup, and there’s a bit of extra room in there for everyday medical needs, such as paw-paw ointment, teatree oil and adult and child Panadol/Tylenol. Fingers crossed that’s all we’ll ever need.

 
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By: Barbara

A career girl who dropped out, traveled, found love, and never got around to going home again. Now wrangling a cross-cultural relationship and two third culture kids.