Building A Medic Bag

hey guys my name is Sam and welcome pragmatics in this week's video I'm showing you how to build a medic bag [Music] so guys a couple things before we get started vertex was kind enough to send me this bag for this video and I do have an affiliate link for them so if you want to pick up this shirt anything from their site you can find that link down in the description but that being said you know while this bag is a great example of something you can use to build a medic bag it does not necessarily have to be this there are a number of bags on the market you can use I like vertex because of a couple things we'll get into when the rest of the video starts but that's kind of up to you how you want to pack it and what you want to use I really want this video to be about the philosophy of setting up a medic bag where you put stuff what to consider when buying a bag what supplies you should have in it and then I want you guys to take that and kind of make it fit your scenario what works for you when are you gonna use this bag so while this is what I have in it this is not necessarily what everybody else will have in it or how you will stock it that's very much up to you the user that's going to actually be putting the tools in these kits to use so without further ado let's get into the video all right so let's start with the bag when you're selecting a bag for a medic bag or a first aid bag you really want something with a lot of compartmentalization you don't want to open up the top and have just a jumble of all of your supplies you have to dig through to find every individual thing you want something with a lot of individual pockets on the inside that you can store your supplies the goal is to open it up and see everything you need right there and not have to dig so for this video I'm using the vertex 45 leader contingency duffel they make an 85 liter but honestly that is far too big for a medic bag so I'm going with this one and this has a couple features which we'll get into that I think make it ideal for a project like this so starting out you know the first thing you should be considering with the bag is your immediate item so I kind of divide it I go by the March algorithm but really what I'm thinking is what do I need right now what will I need on every call and what is what is the stuff that can wait a little bit longer so I really like having one pocket that has all the main things of say and IFAC so over here on this pocket this is one of the features I really like of this pack I've got a quick-draw pocket that I can open really quickly and this is where I want to put all my immediate life-saving items so I've already pre-loaded these onto their max onto their holsters here so I'm here I've got my ARS needles and I've got a trauma bandage and that I'm gonna stick right on the bottom here because it is stuff that I'll need very quickly this is not stuff I want to be digging for now right on top of that I'm gonna add my tourniquet so I've got two cat tourniquets and two things of combat gauze so quick clot gauze here for packing wounds so that's going to go right on top of that just getting that stuck right there and then the last thing I want in this pocket is I want something for your major chest wounds so up here dig through here I'm just gonna put a couple chest heels now I personally recommend - vented chest seals you should definitely be getting a chest seal with a vent they've been shown to be a lot more effective and then I'm gonna put that right here when this opens they aren't gonna just fall out they're gonna be right here if I need them but they still give me access to everything else now what I really like about this pocket is that like I said before it's the fast draw so I've got this zipper here and doing this one-handed trying to support the bags kind of challenging that I can just draw really quickly it's on the outside of the bag and then there's no digging through pockets or having to go through anything that I can't see it's a quick visualization I can even put a little label down here on this handle that says you know bleeding or something like that so anybody can just take this and open it really quickly so that's kind of your primary that's something that I recommend every pack has your things for your main airway breathing circulation one thing I might throw in here is 128 French NPA because that's kind of a standard size and that's really the tactical airway immediately to get somebody's airway open at least so the next thing that I kind of look at is what do I need on every call these aren't emergency items these are just things that I'm going to use all the time and I want to make sure that these items are where that's easily accessible in this pack it's got kind of an admin pocket and this is kind of perfect for our vitals equipment everything like that so I'm going to come over here I'm just gonna throw a blood-pressure cuff in this pocket up here and I'm going to throw my stethoscope next to it really in EMS every patient contact you're gonna be getting your vital stuff out unless it's like an AMA patient refusal because even to do a patient refusal you need a full set of vitals so have the vital stuff here and then I'm gonna put my pulse oximeter in there as well this is just a small finger pulse oximeter now hopefully this is all supplementing a bigger kit so like if I was going into the ambulance I'd have my monitor that would have all the other more advanced equipment this is just to get a set of vitals on scene and go from there so a couple other things I'm going to throw in these pockets here so I've got my band-aids you never want to be without band-aids that's something that's forgotten a lot of ambulances and we end up like digging in the glucometer bag to get that so I'm going to put some band-aids in there and then surprisingly a lot of EMS agencies can't give over-the-counter meds I'd probably recommend having things like your acetaminophen antacids some anti diarrheal and I use these I use these adventure medical kits I got this from REI and this has just your main things in it so this got this has your die mode anti diarrheal electrolyte tabs antihistamine ibuprofen acetaminophen and and antacid there so it kind of the main over-the-counter meds you'll need and I do have aspirin in this pack so don't call me on that just yet it's just not in the over counter because that's actually used as an emergency medication for us so I'm going to throw those right in this pocket we need some kind of BSI in there as well so I like these ones these are just talon gloves they're neatly packaged generally I'd be getting them from the big thing in the ambulance but these are if I forgot to put my gloves on beforehand I've got them over here I'm going to put some trauma shears in this front pocket if I need these for a trauma situation I can throw them in a lot of people ask me what's my favorite trauma shear I go with the X years on almost everything and I swear by these I've been carrying them for a couple years now I really like them because they're super super simple to use they don't get greasy they don't you know you can clean them really easily unlike the Raptors and they're just simple you don't have to fold them unfold them anything like that they fit in your pants pocket they fit just about anywhere and they're super sharp so I'm just going to throw that into this pocket on the side I think it has to come one over actually to fit and that's going to be something I use a lot so the next thing you're gonna need is you're going to need some kind of notepad now people usually have tablets and everything that's great until the family members just firing off things and you're trying to remember them as you go next to that I'm gonna throw in a sharpie and I'm gonna throw in a pen and then in this pocket I'm gonna have a pen light and that goes along with my vitals just something really easy and then over here I'm going to throw in a tube of oral glucose because that's a really easy intervention and ideally I'd have a glucometer in here I still don't have my glucometer that was issued to me because it was it's being utilized on a truck so I would have that and then just a little thing of hand sanitizer if you're leaving a house after a patient refusal or something you don't want to touch everything before how you get back in the truck so just good to have here and one kind of extra and something that I'm coming around to is I'm gonna put some four by four quick clot dressings in there these are not for wound packing these are not for life-threatening bleeds these are for your scalp wounds that you walk up it's the little lady that fell that's on coumadin some kind of blood thinner and they're bleeding profusely out of their scalp I can just take one of these throw it on and it's something that I find is very useful to just have something that you can slap on their head to keep it from bleeding over their eyes if you've ever seen a scalp injury it looks like a murder scene usually not life-threatening but it's something that you kind of want to address so it doesn't get all over you so that's everything in this admin pocket up front so these are the things that I'm going to use on almost every color not necessarily your life threats now on the front in this particular pack I've got room for some identification so I can put my identification number there and my title there makes me more tactical for sure so some kind of identification is good you can also put like an ID card or something right on the front so that's what I'm gonna have in the front pocket now coming into the main pocket of the pack this is kind of the meat and potatoes of the pack this is everything that we're going to be using throughout our calls so I like to keep this somewhat similar to the philosophy of the rest of the pack is I want the things that I need now easily accessible so right off the bat that's going to be my NPA's and myopia is so I have these in there Mac holders as well I'm gonna put these NPA's right down here no it's not super ideal the placement in this pack just because there's sideways and they're actually going to be under my OPA z' I've been having some trouble just like figuring out this conceptualizing this but they're still very easily accessible I can read the sizes everything right there and then the second thing is I've got my OPA s and another one of their smaller Macs and I'm gonna put these up so you open this pack you can just see those things right there you can grab them as you need them and there's not going to be any issues there so in the bottom of the pack I kind of have two things that are just going to float because these don't have any good pocket that can hold them so I've got a warming blanket this is ready heat blanket and it's got a bunch of hot packs in it basically you cocoon your patient in it keeps them warm I'm just going to lay that right at the bottom of the pack because that's something that a lot of patients will need we don't want somebody getting hypothermic and then these abdominal trauma dressings are invaluable because oftentimes you'll have like an extremity or Donnellan it's just mangled and you don't want to look at it you're not trying to provide like pressure you're just trying to keep it a little bit clean keep things out of that wound and then you're just trying to kind of get it so it's not visual it's not visualized by the patient or yourself and these big dressings are really really useful for that so I'm just going to put that right on top of here now we have to start considering things like our minor trauma so for the minor trauma I'll turn this around so you can see it I can actually keep this in these side pockets here so in here I'm going to have my two large dressings now honestly the brand of these pressure dressings isn't that important you know some people have favorites they might like aways they might like North American rescue anything it doesn't really matter a whole lot they're all going to work pretty much the same you wrap it really tight and it keeps everything really close to the body and then in that same venue we want our other minor trauma stuff so one of the most useful items when it comes to minor trauma is cravat so these are triangular bandages I've got a couple different kinds this one doubles as a burn dressing I don't put a lot of burned stuff in my kits but this is a doubles as a cravat and a burn dressing from North American rescue and then I've got these two triangular bandages these are a little bit more standard I'm going to put these over here now I don't care that these pockets aren't labeled and that you can't see in them because one I'll know my kit I know where to get things to it I can dig for these these aren't things that are gonna save life these aren't things that are super super time-sensitive so we can throw these in there and I almost forgot to mention these are just some roller bandages you can use these to secure a splint any number of things so that's going to go in this pocket here and these are just to keep them out of the way now on the bottom of this kit we're gonna have a couple other things so we need some advanced airway items and my recommendation to you is follow what you're certified to do I know a lot of people like carrying really advanced things and their kits thinking like hey somebody advanced is going to get on scene and they can use my stuff it's a great sentiment I personally don't agree with it I think you're better off just carrying what you need because you're just gonna clutter everything in your pack and then you're gonna have a bunch of useless stuff that's never going to get used as an advanced provider I hopefully have my own things and I'm probably going to think twice before using somebody else's because I don't really know what conditioning is not to say I won't but it's not something I do routinely so in here I as a paramedic I have some advanced airway things this is an airway role I don't know what brand it is I honestly it's not the best airway role ever but it works for this video for sure I've got all my sizes of endotracheal tubes I've got a bougie which is an introducer for that it's also really useful in your cricothyrotomy z' i've got a tube secured down there on the gill forceps for clearing obstructions in an airway if I go to intubate there's something there if somebody's choking a scalpel for a surgical cricothyrotomy and I've got a laryngoscope handle and my blades right here so this all goes an airway role I like having this stuff in a separate kit because as somebody that's intubating I like to have this and put it like right on the shelf next to me or right next to me on the floor I can always grab other stuff and I'm not trying to dig through or have this entire pack with me so once again this kit is going to just sit right on the bottom of this bag here on top of those two things so it's okay if we have to dig for these because these are pretty low use items and they're things that aren't like something we need immediately so I'm okay with this sitting there along with all your airway stuff if you're trained to use a bag valve mask so this is a bag that you pump and it breathes for the patient AJ says if you're by yourself you're better off using a pocket mask unless you're highly trained I've done this a lot so I'm very familiar with how to do this effectively on my own so I carry a BVM because I don't like getting my face close to the patient especially now with the current climate and kovat and all that stuff so I carry one of these if you're not trained I'd throw in a pocket mask in here and you're gonna have a little bit more room if you don't have advanced capabilities because you're not going to have all your airway stuff in this role and I'm just gonna throw this right at the bottom as well this is once again a larger item it's not really going to get in the way there it's just going to sit at the bottom of the pack and not get too jumbled so if you have advanced airway items you definitely need to have some kind of backup airway so these are the King tubes I tried to put the eye here but they just don't fit very well so these are gonna go right on the side of the airway roll these are my backup Airways my super glottis and they're in there in case I fail an intubation or if it's CPR and I can't get the tube without stopping compressions I'm gonna go right to the super galatic Airways so we still have a little bit of space and we have a couple other things to consider the next thing to consider is going to be our IV supplies so I've got all that right down here below me and the IV supplies this is stuff that should be easily accessible but don't obsess over it because ultimately fluid resuscitation is not kind of the life-saving procedure it was made out to be or that it was for years you know this is something that we need to get IVs for medications and other things like that but generally speaking we have things like iOS we have different routes of medication administration in ways that we can use it so this is not always this really big-ticket item I carry it and it's always one of those things I want good access to because in like a cardiac arrest or like in anaphylaxis or something really serious if I'm not running the call it's always my partner yelling like God get an IV we need an IV so I always like to know where it is right away so first we're gonna have I have two 500 milliliter bags of normal saline now I carry two 500 milliliter bags because one while we're on scene we're probably not giving that big of an infusion we just don't have time to do it so I like to have two of these it lets me kind of control it if one gets damaged or wasted or something where I have two IVs going I can flow both at the same time instead of just carrying one liter they also pack a little bit better so I'm going to take these I'm gonna put these right at the end here once again it's okay to have these in a closed pocket because I know where they are and they're not something that's going to help me right now and then I have to administration sets if you're wondering what administration set to get I just get a 15 drop tubing the 60 drops are used for your more temperamental infusions and I don't usually use them as much because not many of our meds are actually given with that kind of an infusion so I have two of those in there so I can start two IVs and sorry for the crinkling there I'm going to zip that pack it up alright so right up here we need our administration stuff so one of the first things I'm gonna throw in is going to be my Start kits so each of these Start kits has a Tegaderm in there to keep the site clean after you do it it's got a four by four or sorry a two by two a tourniquet this is just an elastic band it's not like a cat tourniquet it goes around it decreases vascular return and it actually pumps up your veins and that's got some tape in it a chloraprep wipe and alcohol prep as well so I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna put these right up top here and then finally I'm gonna throw in some IV needles so these are some safety IV needles I carry two eighteen gauges two twenty gauges two 22s and really I think these are the sizes you mainly need the use for a 24 gauge is pretty few and far between you're really really small kids which we're probably going to be going for an i/o before an IV in a lot of circumstances and then your sixteen gauges and your 14 gauges are really large you can still give blood products through 18 gauge 20 gauge 18 gauge are considered a large bore and you can infuse a lot of fluid through them so I'm gonna take these guys and I'm gonna throw these right below the other two and they're really really easily accessible still and we can get at everything they're really easy to visualize on these Mac holders so we've got those down there and then beside that I'm gonna look at some med administration things so down here I'm going to have my saline flushes to start the IV and to I can do some met admin with those I've got a variety of different syringes three ml is probably the most common and then I've got some one ml for my EPI and I've got some needles in here for your IM administration so these guys I'm going to throw right down here and I don't want that to get in the way of anything else necessarily so I'm going to throw those down here and then up above that I've got some more admin stuff I've got some blunt tip needles and some smaller I am administration needles and these guys are going to come right here and kind of squeezed in between those two so now I've got kind of everything I need right on this panel of the bag it's really easy to visualize opening it up and then I've got my my other fluid and stuff right back here so there's a couple other things that are gonna go in here number one is our basic medications so I have never worked at a service that carries all their emergency meds in here where I've worked we've always had like a box that has our most common meds in it so in here I've got my nitroglycerin and aspirin so you give the aspirin you have them chew that up and that's usually for your chest pain it makes the platelets kind of slippery super non scientific explanation of it but it helps get some blood past if there's a blockage in the heart a heart attack nitro it's a vasodilator used much for the same reason you use it in conjunction with the aspirin I've got glucagon so glucagon is an IM injection you give if you can't get an IV for a diabetic to give them sugar while they're unresponsive I can't give anything in their mouth because they might choke on it they can't secure their airway we can give glucagon I am takes a little bit to work but it's a great medication to have I've got solu-medrol so this is basically a steroid and it stops the inflammation over time it's a med that takes 45 minutes ish to start working so we don't usually see the benefits in the field but it's really good for your anaphylactic patients even your asthmatics and stuff to hopefully prevent in anaphylaxis a reoccurrence reaction and it also helps them you know when they're thinking about intubating in the ER that's about when this kicks in so we're hopefully saving somebody a tube with this can also be used in a de Sounion crisis down here I've got I believe that's my diphenhydramine diphenhydramine which is benadryl that's just an antihistamine it can help with like your hives rash itching and kind of a lot of these are for my anaphylaxis I've got two things of epinephrine one to one thousand concentration which is given for your anaphylaxis you can also reconstitute it to be given in your cardiac arrest but generally we have a prefilled for that we've got Meg sulfate which can be used for a number of things mainly in here I have it for its Bronco dilatory effects we can give it really really slowly diluted preferably and it can cause bronchial dilation in your anaphylaxis asthma even it can also be used for seizures of eclampsia and a pregnant patient and it can be used as an anti gesture with make for torsades de pointes which is a cardiac rhythm that's bad and usually does not have a pulse going along with it and then over here I've got my comfort things I've got some metal clamp room I'd which is a antiemetics to stop vomiting and I've got zofran which is also used to stop vomiting that comes in both a vial and then I have it in a dissolvable tab that can be put in the patient's mouth if I don't have time to start an IV and give it back here I've got more admin stuff to just give the meds and I've got two things of narcan and a atomizer back here I can give it in her nasal if need be so two things with narcan that's I believe that's four milligrams total and more than enough to reverse most of our narcotic overdoses so this guy right here I'm just gonna throw right in here next to it holds it pretty secure up top and we can zip this up and you can see that that stuff's not going anywhere one last thing and this goes along in the front pocket just because there's really nowhere else it's going to fit well is we want to have some kind of a splint something that we can secure on the patient if there's injured I use Sam splints for almost everything for my unseen splinting these are super versatile splints you can see here it has a diagram of a couple different ways you can splint and basically whatever you visualize you can make happen so a very versatile versatile tool aa versatile tool I'm sorry it can also be used as a c-collar and some other things so really useful and that I'm just gonna slide into this pocket here vertex has this for like maybe an SPR or something but really it works well for longer objects you can just put that in there I can really easily get it out that way so we zip all this up and we have a complete medic bag now this one is pretty low profile which is kind of nice I would recommend having some kind of bag with a handle this does have handles that come with it you can secure one across you can secure two you can wear it as a backpack anything like that so I like having the option for a backpack because a lot of times when you're coming out of the house are going in you've got your bag you've got your monitor you've got your Lucas device your o2 bag your drug box all of that and it's nice to be able to throw something on your back so this is a general philosophy of how I said some things some things up now I would like to have an i/o device in here I do not have an i/o device to take home and use and that's an interosseous drill that basically allows you to have IV access in your bone and then of course the glucometer which I didn't have either now I want to reiterate that a lot of times this is a bag that's supposed to get you started on a call the main supplies are gonna be in your ambulance they're gonna be things that you supplement with this pack and if this is like if you're a civilian and you're just wanting something for your car you can put something together here and then you start the treatment and once the ambulance arrives you and transition care over to them and they'll use whatever they have so if you have any questions about this please leave them in the comments down below I want to thank vertex for sponsoring this video I have a affiliate link with them so if you're looking at picking up this or anything else on their site you know this shirt or delta stretch pants or anything like that I use my code you get 25% off and it helps support this channel so without further ado I will see you next week [Music]

Channel: PrepMedic

Views: 72,970

Rating: 4.944931 out of 5

Keywords: Medic Bag, Medic kit, first aid kit, firstaid kit, Vertx, Paramedic, Gear, Medical Gear, Medical Equiptment, 911, ambulance, Stop the bleed, Contingency Duffle, Built not bought, EMT, EMS, Emergency, Emergency Medical Service

Id: kcqiUQrNI8k

Length: 26min 28sec (1588 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020