It's finally come to me I'm not invincible. I read plenty of advice that says I need to be carrying a tourniquet and or a quick clot product.

If I could get something to fit in a cigarette package size space I believe I'd have a hard time leaving it behind. Minimalist with maximum lifesaving ability, think compound fracture. I want to live till a helicopter can be summoned into a national forest.

Advice? Product recommendations?

I'm no medical or ems pro but cigarette pack size FAK seems like it would be limited to just bandaids.

Here's an EDC trauma kit as an example:

https://store.itstactical.com/...s/its-edc-trauma-kit

Any possibility you can carry something a bit bigger, are you carrying a pack? What has helped me was to spend the money to buy in bulk & make a bunch of FAKs that I put in various packs, bags that I use occasionally or regularly.

Some discussions that have some great tips & recommendations:

https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...300045814#3300045814

https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...830058644#5830058644

https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...390027524#9390027524

Personal cool guy trauma kits for the average joe have become a cottage industry.

Most of it is unneeded, and down right dangerous. Quick Clot? Sure. Carry it if you wish. Use it for cat scratches. Just remember, when you apply it, it will burn the skin, and meat it touches. The dead tissue will be cut away. Many amputations over seas in combat areas came as a result of too much tissue being lost to ill results of using quick clot. All of the SOCOM docs that I talk to these days hate quick clot.

Several years ago, I witnessed a ND on a range. A very sharp RN rushed to the shot individual. She assessed the leg wound, and opened her kit up to get gauze and packing. The number of men that came running up with quick clot was amusing. I saw a guy open a quick clot pouch with his teeth while running. He got quick clot on his tongue and it burnt it pretty good. Finally, the RN told the quick clot posse to "get the fuck away" to give her room to work. Direct pressure and packing worked wonders.

Having a tourniquet is fine.

Basic first aid supplies, and techniques will get you a long way. The cool guy medical crowd tells us that we have to have all of this other stuff. If you live within an hour of a trauma center, you're probably going to survive just about anything that life can throw at you with basic supplies nd direct pressure, that the cool guy crowd carry stuff for.

Our SWAT doc, and med staff advocate direct pressure for most everything out there and to follow first aid protocols.

Agree with jones we used to call quick clot magic pixie dust and never used it in my 2 years deployed. What I stressed to my medics is that it does no good just dumped on a wound, it needs to be applied at the source of an arterial bleed to be of any use and that is going to be deep inside the wound which you really can’t get to in the field with any certainty. Packing pressure firmly wrapping and in the right circumstances a tourniquet is where it is at

To add a bit, I also stressed and continue to that doing basic things really optimally is much more useful than trying some sort of high speed advanced techniques that take more time skill and equipment than are at all practical.
Interestingly there is a study I reviewed that there is often lower survivability when more advanced medical personnel try advanced techniques compared to sticking to good basics. In this particular study it was found often basic emt’s patients fared better than those field treated by paramedics or doctors

A good tourniquet some Kerri’s for wrapping and packing and an Israeli bandage all combined will easily fit in a cargo pocket, suit coat pocket or regular jacket pocket no problem

Get a semi decent IFAK, toss the quick cot out and toss in 2 Israeli Bandages, 4X4's, tape and extra gloves.

LEARN HOW TO USE IT!
The knowledge, not so much the equipment is what's going to save your / someone else ass.

quote:

Originally posted by captain127:
To add a bit, I also stressed and continue to that doing basic things really optimally is much more useful than trying some sort of high speed advanced techniques that take more time skill and equipment than are at all practical.
Interestingly there is a study I reviewed that there is often lower survivability when more advanced medical personnel try advanced techniques compared to sticking to good basics. In this particular study it was found often basic emt’s patients fared better than those field treated by paramedics or doctors

Advanced medical personnel use good basics...it's where you start! And if that hasn't been done yet by the EMTs - or done poorly, you start over from square one.

A "study" that shows BLS care was superior to ALS care just tells me that the ALS care was on the worst patients, as it should be or the BLS crews "scooped and ran".
Where they scoop and run to is where the advanced care is.
"Studies" are like statistics. Outcome often reflects what the 'researcher' wanted before it began. Until someone double checks all the data available and the data that was used, many times they are BS.

As per the OP's needs, you can suck seal (FoodSaver, etc.) a fairly large bandage into a *much* smaller package.
(also makes it waterproof)
CAT tourniquets start out bigger than a cig pack but are mostly flat. Those are the only ones I have used so I can't say how big the other brands are.
If you're out in the woods, you'll need a fanny pack or small-ish cargo pocket to carry enough gear to wait for the cavalry to show up. It could possibly take hours...and that's if they know where you are.

Tourniquet? Isn’t that just a belt that you’re wearing or your para cord bracelet or a bandanna/handkerchief tightened with a pen?

I use to carry Maxi-pads on me in the office in case I get a paper cut.

Just my 2 cents, but you should attend a TCCC or other field medical course designed for the novice to learn about what items to use for what injury and how to treat them. Dark Angel Medical or anyone of the other lesser known classes on field/ditch medicine or whatever fancy tactical term they call them currently is money well spent. Just like you would for any other class, verify the instructors credentials and ratings for the class.

I can speak for the Dark Angel course and they teach just what jljones described. As a summary of the course, you are put in a role play scenario where you you have to pick the treatment and pack the wound on a dummy, etc. and keep addressing the injuries as you find them. Most of it is just describe what you do or if use a dummy for wound packing, etc. Use of tourniquets is covered in detail and you practice it a lot.

Much more effective to have a tool and the knowledge on how to use it properly to address the situation.

Yeah, carrying something in your car is what I do.

For immediate first aid, direct pressure is my primary FAK. If I need packing, that's my shirt. TQ, belt.

Take a Wilderness EMT class. Skills over gear. You will learn how to assess the injury properly and then treat it properly with what is on hand.
Understanding the problem is 90% of the fix. The rest is knowing what will help, what will make it worse and what supplies you need.
An educated person with a dirty rag and a belt is better than a $200 Tactical Medical Solutions kit (really cool, BTW) and no clue where the bleeding is coming from or where the pressure points are.

Bruce

I'll second getting some good training. In my situation I was concerned with a situation where I was more than an hour away from competent medical care and ended up getting certified by NOLS. My last course was taught by a PJ who was able to teach us how to boil down and asses the situation and provide enough basic medical care to get the patient to proper care.
I now have three different FAK's; one in the truck that might cover vehicle accidents (just basic stabilization); another for when I'm on hikes and the third that has everything I'm competent to use that I take on longer trips in remote areas.

Here's a link to some of the courses they offer.

https://nols.edu/en/about/wild...ne/initial-training/

Looks like NOLS conducts their training at REI here in Texas.

Question for those bagging on QuikClot: Are you against the powder, the QuikClot gauze, or all of the above?

At the Dark Angel class I attended, they were anti-powder, but pro-gauze, and they include QuikClot gauze (or the competitor, depending on the kit/option) in their kits.

Curious...

To echo Bruce’s comment on skills over gear, Dark Angel taught how to use everything in their kit, but also stressed the many things that could be used instead (gorilla tape and a chip bag or Mylar food wrapper for an improvised chest seal for instance.). They covered how duct tape doesn’t do nearly as well sticking when things are wet / bloody as gorilla tape does, and how several feet of gorilla tape can be wrapped around a used hotel room card resulting in a small and convenient package. My 1.5” Beltman belt (love it, great belt) is way too stiff to be a good tourniquet and paracord is a whole lot more like a ligature than a tourniquet, but if push came to shove and either was the only thing available I’d do the best I could with what I had.

There's at least one study that I'm familiar with that concluded that properly applied cotton gauze is just as effective as QuikClot when dealing with severe hemmorhaging.

And things like belts, bandanas, or Paracord are not effective as TQs. A homemade quasi-TQ from a belt might be better than nothing in an emergency to help slow bleeding, but I wouldn't purposefully rely on those if having a real TQ handy is an option. Most improvised TQs cannot be tightened enough to fully stop the blood flow. And skinny ligatures like laces or Paracord are especially troublesome, since they're thin enough that they can do more harm than good when they crush the skin and underlying structures as you try to tighten them. You end up with an ineffective tourniquet AND additional damage.

(There's a reason that real TQs are relatively wide - 2" or so...)

Cotton gauze, vacuum sealed, some variety of a pressure dressing, some tape, and a tourniquet, are the very basics.

If you were trying to fit it as small as possible, with the least amount of product, I'd do a SWAT-T and North American Rescue's Z-fold gauze, which is probably the smallest I've seen.

That said, the SWAT-T has limitations. Primarily, it sucks as a tourniquet. And one roll of gauze is not enough.

I don't know if they even make the powder quickclot anymore. But I'd spend my $$ on more cotton gauze rather than a hemostatic (the study mentioned above is exactly why, and it's true).

The answers are why I asked here. My primary concern is back country hunting, a solo proposition. Like I said compound fracture, falling and impaling myself on a tree limb, sticking a knife deeply in myself.

This last hunt found me 4 hours by horseback from a road, and a couple more miles from the base camp every day. I try being deliberate about my actions and have pretty well gotten past my dumbshit days.

Training is where I'll start. I appreciate the responses.

quote:

Originally posted by reflex/deflex 64:
The answers are why I asked here. My primary concern is back country hunting, a solo proposition. Like I said compound fracture, falling and impaling myself on a tree limb, sticking a knife deeply in myself.

This last hunt found me 4 hours by horseback from a road, and a couple more miles from the base camp every day. I try being deliberate about my actions and have pretty well gotten past my dumbshit days.

Training is where I'll start. I appreciate the responses.

That's a bit of a different picture.

The basics don't change much, but the training does. The wilderness first aid classes mentioned above would be worth more than anything else in this thread. EMTs/TCCC trains you to get the person fixed long enough to get them to definitive care, usually in less than an hour. That is not the scenario you are looking at. Wilderness care would cover your scenarios much better.

Or, you could just hire me to be your tag-along medic on your excursions I don't talk too much and generally only sing in public after too much rum. A little grumpy in the mornings, though.