I decided to explore our first aid station and noticed some serious issues. I have taken the liberty to partially address what I found and I am detailing my notes here:
Problematic items:
The pocket mask in the hardcase St John Ambulance was lacking a one-way valve, I have removed it from the space and will be replacing the valve before returning it. If you need a pocket mask (ie someone is not breathing) the newly labeled “EMERGENCY bag” has one in its original packaging.
The “Ultralight/Watertight Medical Kit .5” had a ziptie through the zipper preventing it from being opened. This is not an appropriate obstacle to put in the way of someone handling an emergency.
There was a Syringe of “Ivermectin” - “Oral Paste for Horses” in the supplies box.
There was a nearly empty blue-roll-up first aid kit on-top-of/in-the-way-of the rest of the first aid supplies. Its remaining items included three random OPAs and an Oxygen wrench.
There were three first aid kits sitting on the safety table, only one is what I would describe as “well stocked and maintained”. The others are better described as decoys.
There were two “Choking Rescue Device” bags obstructing access to the proper supplies. It does seem that bystander/layman chocking rescue devices are real and valid, but these ones are knockoffs and I am deeply wary of them.
The good First Aid Kit now has a paper strip tied around the zipper handles to indicate if it needs to be restocked whenever it is broken (and thus goes missing). It also has a Tag tied around the handles appropriately labeling it the “EMERGENCY bag - (grab and GO)”.
To prevent unhelpful and/or dangerous supplies obstructing easy access to the boo-boo box, and to generally declutter the area I’ve taken the following items and placed them in a cardboard box:
Ivermectin
knockoff chocking rescue devices
Both red incomplete first aid kits
The blue incomplete first aid kit
The tiny yellow first aid kit
I also redistributed a few items to more sensible homes:
One of the Pulse Oximeters is now in the Emergency kit, the other is looped onto the boo-boo box.
The OPAs from the blue incomplete first aid kit are in the Emergency kit.
The Band-Aids from the incomplete kits are now in the boo-boo box.
Here is the box I have sequestered the items I object to, it is labeled @Mitchell only as a formality to keep it under protection until the items are properly addressed. (I added an “@” after taking the picture)
I am not really qualified to comment on this (new-ish member, no relevant first aid training/experience), but it seems like really valuable and useful work you have done. If you want to buy some stuff to improve/deal with gaps in our first aid situation, it will probably be easy to get support from other members for VHS to fund the purchase.
Thanks for doing that and good call on the “choking rescue devices”. These are not even mentioned at all in the basic first aid course so they’re obviously meant for people with more first aid training than most of us probably have. They seem like they would just make a choking situation worse if used improperly.
My next steps (for another time):
Inspect the boo-boo box in the woodworking room.
Fully part-out/drain/empty/redistribute the contents of the spare first aid kits.
Find a new home for extra First Aid supplies now that the bin has been re-purposed into a station.
Make sure nobody objects to me throwing out the knockoff “Choking Rescue Devices”.
If such a thing exists: get the attention of the first aid and/or safety committees.
We probably need to restock on band aids soon
It could work in a pinch, but I recommend throwing this one out and using the one in the Emergency bag. If we want a spare we can buy a replacement, they are quite affordable.
For those who don’t know, Ivermectin has been prescribed to humans in oral form for river blindness (onchocerciasis) and threadworms (strongyloidiasis) for years. Also a number of studies found it effective against covid, but it didn’t fit with big pharma and Fauci’s ideas.
As for the veterinary grade of Ivermectin, IMHO it should be tossed in the garbage.
Please bin it as we do not need to deworm a horse or a hacker as far as I know.
For human use of ivermectin please consult with a licensed physician as it is a prescription med.
Thanks Mitchell! Amazing you are working on this.
FYI if supplies are needed this is the sort of thing that would fall under VHS’s operating budget. A good process to make that happen is to 1. figure out what is needed 2. post a list with the total cost 3. get pre-approval from the board of directors to make the purchase (this ensures you get reimbursed, 4. after you buy stuff, submit your expenses to directors AT vanhack dot ca. Also no pressure to take this on. Just doing an assessment and clear out is fantastic.
Thought: it strikes me that we may be getting first aid kit donations from our amazon donations. These may not actually be worth keeping. We probably automatically sort them into our first aid supplies. This might explain some of the items in there.
The amazon donations being a source of bad supplies that get auto-sorted into the pile was my suspicion as well. I’m a new member so I didn’t see it happen myself, but its been the consensus so far from people I’ve been talking too.
Part of the reason I made this long forum post was to draw eyes since the changes I made were quite substantial. I want to be sure nobody was attached to any particular part of it and that I’m not misunderstanding why any part of it was there.
There were not, that’s a great addition to the “grocery” list
There could potentially be some hidden away elsewhere since I only looked through the one area. I doubt it though, especially with the way it appears anything first aid related would just float towards the station
Them not being together makes me think we should post some maps of the space with first aid and safety supplies marked.
My first thought was just to put first aid land on the map
But that seems incomplete since then the eye wash bottles are not in the same place, and then once we start marking all the small details it clashes with the vibe of this map. This brought to mind to take inspiration from commercial spaces and post physical maps indicating where to find first aid, naloxone, fire extinguishers, eye wash stations, etc
So I’m imagining something vaguely like this posted around the space in a few places.
There needs to be a list of contents (which includes restocking instructions and expiration dates) at all the first aid stations. Making it easier for members to maintain means more will help keeping it stocked.
I see there are such lists on the VHS docs (e.g admin:kit1 [Vancouver Hack Space]), but not any instructions on how they should be maintained (like, do you buy the supplies yourself and get reimbursed?).
The majority of it got split three ways between supplementing the boo-boo box and Emergency bag and the St John’s hardcase kit.
The dubious Choking Rescue Devices have been tossed, and the Ivermectin is also gone. I took it as a novelty.
The three (now empty) first aid bags are back in my new bin for temporary safekeeping. Idk what I should do with them but I figured they might be worth giving some time. (And I tossed the teeny tiny yellow bag once emptied)
I will not be in next Saturday, so it will be another two weeks before I pick at this project any further.
Nonetheless, my plan of attack:
Sizzinseal is right that there needs to be a formal list of first aid kit contents.
I’d like a nicer boo-boo box that makes everything even easier to keep organized for quick patch-ups, I’ve been contemplating what would work best.
2.5. In addition to that, the St Johns hardcase has become the impromptu storage spot for extra supplies so I’m not storing things in a cardboard box.
