The first-aid kit is three kits

Start with the smallest, because the people here need it often. Across eight separate conversations: a couple of plasters in your wallet, purse or phone case — one account adds an antiseptic wipe, because the small cut happens wherever the kit isn't, and the box at home is no use there; one argument here calls it clutter and the other side says it's the item they keep handing to friends and their children. Then the home kit, which is a box, not a drawer of expired things — one caution describes the drawer of forgotten, expired medicine most households accumulate. The plain contents, taken from the Red Cross's own kit list and matching what the people here carry: adhesive plasters in several sizes, sterile gauze pads and a roll, a cloth tape, a couple of large absorbent dressings, antiseptic wipes, antibiotic ointment in single packets, tweezers, small scissors, disposable gloves, a digital thermometer, a cold pack, an emergency blanket, a breathing barrier if anyone's trained in CPR. Two conversations add the things the lists leave off: a decent thermometer marked for which end it's for, a small tube of glue for a clean cut edge — leave one end open to drain, one caution says — and tape that holds. Single accounts add saline in squeeze ampoules for rinsing grit out of a cut or an eye, iodine wipes for the wound itself since alcohol pads are for skin before a plaster and sting in a cut, liquid bandage for scrapes, a small torch and reading glasses because the instructions are tiny and the light is bad, and a sweet for the person who's just had a fright. Two conversations say the pre-made kits are thin — cheap plasters, ointment that dries out, a lot of box for little inside — and that building your own from good items costs more and works; one account buys in bulk and stocks three boxes at once. One person who lives alone makes sure the box opens with one hand. Then the car kit, which five separate conversations say is the one that meets real accidents, and which is different: everything above, plus an emergency foil blanket — two conversations carry it, with the caution that foil reflects cold as well as heat and won't warm someone already wet and freezing, so add a hand-warmer and a real blanket in winter — gloves, because the blood you meet at a crash is someone else's, a torch, water, and one account's idea of a prepaid card for the day your wallet is somewhere in a wreck. One account describes splitting the car into a small kit for cuts and a separate trauma kit for bleeding, which the next question is about, and a seasonal bag for being stranded. What not to keep in the car: medicines, which the third question covers, because heat ruins them.

Only if you've been trained, and then yes — that is the envelope the people here and the bleeding-control programmes agree on, and it deserves the whole answer. Four separate conversations and a run of single accounts, several from emergency workers, say the same sequence: for heavy bleeding, press hard on the wound with whatever is clean, and keep pressing; don't lift the dressing to look, add more on top; and if firm pressure on an arm or leg won't stop bleeding that is spurting or pooling, a tourniquet two inches above the wound, high and tight — never on a joint, never below the elbow or knee — tightened until the bleeding stops, with the time written down, and left alone until the professionals take over. Four corrections in these conversations put down the old fear: a properly applied tourniquet does not cost the limb in the time an ambulance takes, and the old two-hour rule is outdated; the thing that kills is bleeding out, which one account says can happen in minutes from a severed artery. Two conversations say the training matters more than the tool — a bleeding-control course, which the programme called Stop the Bleed, teaches this in a short course — and a caution here says an untrained person with a tourniquet is as likely to do harm as good: too loose, on the wrong place, loosened to 'let some blood through', which two accounts say is how a patient bleeds out. So the rule this page carries: a tourniquet and a pack of proper gauze belong in a car kit only alongside the course; without the course, your job is pressure, and calling. Two smaller pieces. One argument here is about using sanitary pads or tampons on wounds because they absorb; the other side says absorbing is not the same as stopping — a wound wants firm pressure on gauze, and sanitary products are designed for different fluids and may deter clotting, that side says — and this page sides with pressure and gauze, with a pad as the thing you press with if it's all you have. And one caution that the people here who've been at crashes insist on: a standard kit will not save a life in a serious accident, and a bystander who exceeds their training can end one, so the most valuable items in a car for a crash are a phone, gloves, a blanket, the knowledge to press hard, and the sense not to move anyone who isn't in immediate danger.

The people here disagree about whether medicines belong in a first-aid kit at all, and the argument is at the bottom of the page. Here is what the ones who keep them keep, and the rules that matter more than the list. Three separate conversations stock ordinary over-the-counter medicines with the wound supplies: a painkiller — paracetamol, called acetaminophen in North America, which one correction notes confuses travellers — and an anti-inflammatory, an antihistamine, an antiseptic; single accounts add a stomach remedy and cold medicine so a sick person doesn't have to go out. Two conversations keep naloxone at home even with no known opioid use, because accidental exposure and mistaken pills happen and the pharmacists' line is that it does no harm if it wasn't needed; in many places it's free from a pharmacy. Now the rules. Where: three conversations say not under the bathroom sink or in the bathroom cabinet, because damp and steam take the strength out of pills, and a warning here says not in the car either — the glove box bakes, and the medicine you'd rely on in an emergency may be the one that's stopped working; a cool, dry drawer or cupboard away from the stove is the place. Paracetamol: two warnings say not with alcohol, and not without care if your liver is already unwell, because the dose that harms is nearer the dose on the box than people assume; one argument here between it and the anti-inflammatories lands on 'it depends who's taking it', which depends on age and liver health, the argument says. Antihistamine: three accounts on one side of an argument here carry it because they believe it slows a severe allergic reaction until help comes, and a correction here is blunt that it does not — paramedics have stopped carrying it for that reason — it eases itching and hives and does nothing for a closing airway or a crashing blood pressure; epinephrine does, and so does the emergency call. Carry the antihistamine for the hives, and know its limit. Aspirin: one correction here, and the stroke charities' own guidance, say never for a suspected stroke, because if the stroke is a bleed you make it worse; for a suspected heart attack, do what the emergency dispatcher tells you. Burns: two single accounts say a numbing spray helps the pain and does nothing for the burn — cool it under cool running water for twenty minutes first — one account says at least ten; the burn charities say twenty, then cover it loosely, and a burn on a hand, a face or a joint, or any deep burn, goes to a hospital. Anti-diarrhoea tablets: one argument here says they suppress something your body is doing on purpose, and the other side says they're for the plane; both are right. Expiry: two single accounts say the box fills with dead medicine unless you go through it once a year, and heat in a car does it faster. And one line from the tangent this page set aside: an improvised splint lets you use the hand, and pain or swelling that persists needs an image of the bone, not more tape.