Choosing the Right First Aid Kit for your Needs

Whether trying to

Should You Put Together a Customized Kit?

There are several benefits involved with putting together a customized emergency first aid kit. First of all, you’ll be able to choose the amount and quantity of items you need, without having to compromise on getting fewer bandages for the sake of buying a ready-made kit that has some other, less common medical supplies that you might need. Secondly, as mentioned earlier, you can add the most important items that your family will use, focusing on the necessary maintenance medication for specific diseases such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease or even various allergies.

Another important consideration is that you can make your survival first aid kit as large and comprehensive or as small and portable as you need it to be. This means you can adapt it to fit in your car, or for all the items to fit conveniently inside one of your bathroom or kitchen cabinets.

Finally, the price you’d pay for your survival kit is also worth mentioning. Finding the best first aid kit that includes all the items you need can be a difficult job, and you may need to settle for a kit that has hundreds of supplies, which will naturally cost a lot of money. By creating your own first aid box you can hand pick the items and amounts you need specifically, without adding any extras or paying for anything unwanted.

Buying a Complete First Aid Kit – What to Search for?

If you’re after a basic emergency first aid kit, it makes no practical sense to go around town looking for all the items you need, especially if you’re in a hurry. Complete commercial kits are provided with everything you need for the most common emergencies, as long as you know what to look for.

Basic products and medical supplies should be the first on your list. Any kit you buy should have medical adhesive tape, insect bite treatments, pain-relief medication, antibacterial ointments, antiseptic wipes, nonstick sterile pads, adhesive bandages, antihistamine and blister treatments.

For advanced wound care and medication, your typical survival first aid kit will likely contain pressure bandages, a pocket mask, anti-acid tablets, Aloe Vera gel and eye drops. For wound care you can also consider kits that can provide you with surgical gloves, saline for flushing out wounds, liquid bandages, roller gauze, a multi-tool pocket knife and a small mirror to help you see and address wounds in less accessible areas.

Finally, it’s a good idea to consider the less common, optional items you might need. These will largely depend on your own customized requirements. For example, you may want to include venom antidotes and special items required for dealing with snake bites, or you could look into adding maps, compasses and navigation items that will help keep you alive when you’re stranded out at sea.

Best First Aid Kit – The Top Brands to Look for

Now that you know what it is you need to find, let’s see who can provide the best first aid kit products that have it all. The following brands are counted among the most reputable and dependable when it comes to offering the best value you can expect for your money:

• Ever Ready First Aid is known as one of the most efficient brands offering high quality first aid kits that are designed for battle-ready and emergency situations. Large band-aids, hemorrhage control bandages and X-ray friendly products will ensure you’re well-taken care of. These kits also provide you with FDA-approved, high quality medical products and bandages that are widely used by the military.
• Ansi First Aid – Ansi will bring you some of the most comprehensive and complete emergency and survival first aid kit products currently available on the market. While available at an affordable cost, Ansi kits are considered to be highly practical, regardless of whether you need them to treat a mild wound or deal with a heart attack. Medical tape, blister and splinter relief, Ibuprofen, rescue blankets, triangular bandages and certi-strips are just some of the products you can get as part of your kit, and the provided guides from Ansi will make it easy even for beginners to use kits efficiently.
• First Aid Only –  is another brand that provides high quality emergency first aid kit products for convenient medical support at short notice. Their kits can feature more than 300 items, ranging from high quality adhesive bandages of multiple sizes, to eye pads, sterile gauze pads, trauma pads, adhesive tape rolls and nitrile examination gloves.
• Finally, Rescue Essentials provide comprehensive Trauma first aid kits that are suitable for first responder type medical situations. These kits are built to Department of Homeland Security Specs are used by US Customs and border control. They are designed to provide the necessary support when dealing with the most common medical emergency situations.

These brands are known for offering the best quality, as well as for adding all the most practical items to any emergency first aid kit. Although the pricing involved might be slightly higher than in the case of some of the cheapest kits available on the market, you’ll find that the added expense is well worth it.

** Note** You should bear in mind that most of the first aid kits provided by the brands above are designed for the home market or workplace so will need considerable boosting in order to bring them up to med kits worthy of being of use in an emergency disaster situation, plus they do not carry any antibiotics and other meds that will be needed when the SHTF and even basic medicines are no longer available.

Subtle Factors That Set Apart the Best First Aid Kits

The redundancy of the included items, the convenience associated with restocking your first aid kit and the overall weight of the box are factors you should always consider before buying your new emergency first aid kit.

Also, if size and weight isn’t a problem, why not get the largest kit and the greatest amount of supplies and medicine that you can find? In most cases, you will have to watch for expiration dates for your medication, and replace all the necessary items periodically, since it’s likely that you won’t use all the items too soon. On the other hand, if an emergency situation does present itself, and you have a use for almost everything you have in your kit, you will be glad that you added everything and don’t have to worry.

Best First Aid Kit – Pricing and Reviews

Regardless of the survival first aid kit you buy, reviews and prices are also essential, if you want to make sure you get only the best products. Online reviews are available on all the top and most recent products offered by the aforementioned brands. Also, specialty websites can give you the scoop on what specific items to expect from each first aid kit and on whether or not the quality is worth the cost.

The price for a typical ready-made first aid kit can vary from below $10 to more than $50, and you’ll find that prices will vary even within the product list offered by the same brand. Although you don’t necessarily have to focus on paying a large sum for a common survival kit, you’ll find that it is worth taking the time to analyze your options and see which specific product can offer the most suitable supplies and tools for your emergency needs.

Getting the best first aid kit on the market ultimately depends on you and your specific requirements, and the quality level you get may be far less dependent on the amount you pay than you might imagine.

If you are looking to put together a SHTF medical emergency kit remember that what you will in fact be putting together is as much health protection and treatment as possible, there is a good chance there will be no doctors, no healthcare, no medication, nothing! Self reliance is key.

Important: Even if you have the best med kit possible and enough antibiotics to treat a small army of infected people, if you don’t know how to use any of it then you may end up doing more harm than good. Study!