Well, of course you should carry a First Aid kit – but what should be in it? If you look in most of the kits available in the marketplace you will find a whole lot of things you will never ever use. They are there because the manufacturer is trying to cater for every possibility under every situation, most of which are not that likely in the bush, and some of which are ridiculous. Of what use is it to put a triangular sling on someone to handle a broken collar bone in the middle of the bush? The person can’t carry a pack that way and wouldn’t be able to walk very far anyhow: you would be better off sending someone to get help. If the person really has to walk, use a safety pin to attach their sleeve to the opposite shoulder of the shirt.
What is really important to understand is that Remote Area Medicine is different from domestic First Aid. For a start, the 'First' bit is wrong: if the injury is small it may be 'All' the aid the patient is going to get. If the injury is large, the patient isn’t going anywhere. Forget about the whole concept of 'First Aid' in the bush.
We used to carry a large First Aid Kit suitable for field surgery, but most of the contents never got used and went out of date. These days we carry a few Panadol, some wide micropore surgical tape (veryall-purpose), a small amount of burn cream, a handful of Band-Aids (both ordinary and wide), a sterile scalpel blade in its sealed wrapper (weighs nothing), a special needle for spikes and splinters and some iodine pills for sterilising water. Add a couple of clean handkerchiefs from the spare clothes bag for bandages, a bit of string and a sharp pocket knife from the goodies bag, and that’s it. It makes a very small kit – and the bandaids are about all that ever get used anyhow. It all goes in a well waterproofed bag of course.
