What is your goal when you come across an injured or ill person on the street? To stabilize that person and transport them to a modern medical facility. But what if that option didn’t exist due to a disaster or other situation that places you off the grid or in a remote location? Survival medicine combines the use of conventional techniques, improvisation, and natural remedies to achieve the best result for the patient when the ambulance is not on the way.
Can you name your top five Survival Skills and Safety/First Aid Skills that could potentially save a life when help won’t be arriving soon?
1) The ability to sterilize questionable water and properly prepare food to avoid infectious disease.
2) The ability to control hemorrhage in an accident or other injury.
3) The ability to deal with orthopedic injuries
4) The knowledge of how to use standard and alternative remedies for injuries and illnesses.
5) The ability to establish a sick room that maximizes the chance for the sick to achieve full recovery from injuries and epidemic disease while protecting the healthy.
What is the survival gear you would like to have close when the situation calls for it it?
This depends on the situation. For bleeding wounds, a tourniquet, compression bandages, and blood-clotting agents. For orthopedic injuries, splints, wraps, and casting material. For infectious disease, dressings, antiseptics, and antibiotics. The gear varies with the medical issue being confronted.
Can you give 5 tips to the starting-out survivalist?
1) Decide whether you will stay in place or retreat to a more remote location.
2) Know how to purify water and prepare food safely.
3) Learn how to safely dispose of human waste.
4) Learn basic first aid and take classes like CERT that will help you respond to emergencies
5) Have more supplies than you think you’ll need. You’re likely to be caring for more people than you think.
Please tell us more about your amazing book “The Survival Medicine Handbook: A Guide for When Help is Not on the Way”
Our book is now in its 700 page third edition The Survival Medicine Handbook: The Essential Guide for When Medical Help is Not on the way. The book covers 150 medical topics with the mindset that the average person is, due to some disaster or a remote location, is the end of the line with regards to their family’s help. The book aims to make that person effective in a medical role. From front cover to back, the book is different from other medical books in that it never says to go to the doctor or get to a hospital, because it assumes that something has happened and they no longer exist for the foreseeable future.
Joe and Amy Alton are the authors of the 3 category #1 Amazon Bestseller "The Survival Medicine Handbook".
For over 900 articles on medical preparedness in wilderness, disaster, or other austere settings, go to their website at www.doomandbloom.net. The opinions voiced by Joe Alton, M.D., and Amy Alton, A.R.N.P. are their own and are not meant to take the place of seeking medical help from a qualified healthcare provider.
Twitter: @preppershow
Facebook: drbonesand nurseamy
Facebook Group: Survival Medicine Group
Youtube: DrBonesNurseAmy channel
iTunes:Survival Medicine Hour iTunes Link
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