What Stock do you Need to Have?
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It is not possible for us in this course to tell you exactly what you need to have in your first aid kit. You will have to risk-assess your workplace or situation and decide on the likelihood of an injury occurring that would require the use of a tourniquet or haemostatic dressing.
The Health and Safety Executive is otherwise known as the HSE states that where your needs-assessment has identified a requirement for tourniquets and/or haemostatic dressings you should make sure that your haemostatic dressings are always in date; workplace first aiders are trained by a competent provider in when to apply a tourniquet and the correct technique to use, and workplace first aiders have training in when and how a haemostatic dressing is applied.
They also state that examples of sectors that may benefit from additional training in the use of tourniquets based on RIDDOR data include industries like construction, agriculture, forestry and some aspects of manufacturing. This could be increased to many other sectors depending on possible risks.
Once you have risk-assessed, you need to decide what to buy and make sure that training is given to all first aiders. A minimum could be a commercial tourniquet and one or two haemostatic dressings. To buy this does not cost a lot but it is most important that first aiders know how to use it correctly.
The cheapest thing you could do would be to replace your paper type triangular bandages for the cloth type as these could then be used as a tourniquet in an emergency.
In some cases, you may need to create a special bleeding kit in case of a catastrophic bleed or even be able to deal with multiple catastrophic bleeds on different people in the case of an explosion or terrorist attack.