Retreat Medicine Chest -- Pre-Scenario

[Celt]

Say for instance you were the Chief Medical Officer for a retreat facility.

The retreat group consists of 4.5 families (20 people give or take)with persons as young as 3 months and as old as 65. Include 2 or 3 horses, 2 goats, cats, dogs, and chickens.

It is a working rural facility and it does expect to deal with some level of armed hostilities.

As the CMO you are given the responsibility to develop an inventory of medical equipment and supplies, along with reference material for ad-hoc assistants (especially if you get winged).

Since the facility is on a budget you have to keep the inventory within a moderate price range.

On top of this you may also suggest that members of the retreat recieve Pre-SHTF training as part of the overall medical inventory.

Therefore what do you include in the Retreat Medicine Chest? Equipment, supplies, reference material, training?

Celt

[cayoung]

It is an interesting question, preplanning a retreat medical situation.

Of course, there is no way to completely know what kind of medical probs will face your community. Considering that you've planned in armed conflict, this adds to the list of possible problems.

Considering also that this is a post world scenario, you and your assistants would not have the back up of hospitals, and so on.

My layman's point of view is that you won't be able to do much complicated. It will be limited to "much better than no care at all". So, pain reduction and wound care are high on the list.

Might want to start with some sugar and honey. As discussed on this forum. Couple bottles of asprin and acet. Asprin available from Medtech. Acet from BJ's or equivilant. Whatever you can afford in the way of tape, and gauze. Sutures and procedure tray from Medtech. Gloves, masks, and gowns are good.

Major emphasis on prevention. Send everyone in your group to dentist and MD for checkups before things get bad.

Of course, I'm a layman, so I'm sure I'm missing a lot. But, others on the board will oblige to teach me what I'm missing.

[Reasonable Rascal]

Now that I am back from treating the wounded after several days away I'll try to address this.

Just for reference I was camping with a group of several families. I set up my standard field aid station with capacity of 2 patients (stretchers). I actually had two simultaneous cases. Without going into details 2 young ladies ran into a barbed wire fence in the dark. Another the day before required incising out a deeply implanted thorn in the heel.

Quick list of supplies used over the course of 3-1/2 days included 1 procedure tray, a #11 scalpel, a very large mittful of non-sterile gauze as well as several packets of sterile dressings. About a dozen 1/4" suture strips, 2 tubes of triple antibiotic, small mosquito forceps, wound probe, 5 bottles of sterile NaCl (small bottles, granted), several Povidone-Iodine wipes, a surgical scrub brush, hand cleanser of the gelled alcohol variety, gloves of course, half a dozen large adhesive bandaids, and a few other odds and ends I can't think of right off. Oh yes, and we wore out one set of batteries completely and gave others a good workout. The twin cases were treated by lantern and flash light.

RR