What should actually be in a home first aid kit?

A functional home kit covers wound care and assessment. Adhesive bandages in assorted sizes, sterile gauze pads and rolled gauze, medical tape, adhesive wound closure strips, antiseptic wipes or solution, antibiotic ointment, non-latex gloves, tweezers for splinters and ticks, blunt-tipped scissors, an instant cold pack, an elastic bandage for sprains, a digital thermometer, and a basic reference guide. Add over-the-counter medications appropriate to your household: pain relievers, antihistamine, hydrocortisone cream, and oral rehydration salts.

Household-specific items are what turn a generic kit into a useful one. Prescribed epinephrine auto-injectors for anyone with severe allergies, plus a spare, and everyone in the house knowing where they are and how to use them. Rescue inhalers for asthma. Glucose tablets for anyone on insulin. A list of every household member's medications, allergies, conditions, and physicians, along with emergency contacts and the Poison Control number, kept in the kit and not only in a phone that may be dead or locked.

Two additions punch above their weight for serious injuries. A commercial tourniquet and a pressure dressing address severe bleeding, which can be fatal within minutes and is the injury most likely to kill someone before help arrives, and public bleeding-control training programs exist precisely because bystanders are the ones present. Learning to use them matters as much as owning them, which extends to the whole kit: a CPR and first aid course through the Red Cross or a comparable provider is a few hours and is the component that makes the supplies useful. Check the kit twice a year, replacing expired medications and used items, and keep a smaller version in each vehicle, since that is where you are most likely to encounter an injury away from other resources.