Becoming a Lifesaver: Brian McLaughlin on Mastering First Aid and Trauma Response for Concealed Carriers

Hi, welcome to the Armguardian Podcast, season two, episode seven. I'm your host, brian, and today Crystal and I will be talking to Brian McLaughlin from Mountain man Medical. Brian's going to discuss with us today first aid for the concealed carrier and how important it is to be familiar with basic first aid procedures in case you were to need them in an emergency. He'll also discuss how to identify bad versus good products and considerations that you may want to have for your first aid kit. So stay tuned and enjoy today's episode. Brian, how are you doing?

sir, I'm doing great. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me on. Thank, you.

Thank you for coming on. This is one of the topics that's kind of near and dear to me. I tell people whenever I talk to them about it that this is the lost, the forgotten topic in concealed carry, because a lot of people they don't think about the first aid, they think about the gun and the gun's going to save them and be the cure, all solution when we it most likely is. But we also have to be prepared for that time where us are, or loved one might be, in a situation where we're needing care. So I appreciate you coming on and talking about this topic with us.

Oh man, this is the thing I talk about the most. I'll talk your ear off about it, so we'll get some good stuff here.

All right. Well, for people that don't know who Brian McLaughlin or Doc is, give us a little bit of your background, your bio.

Brian. Well, my name is Brian McLaughlin. I am the director of medical training over at Mount man Medical and I also produce significant amount of the content for social media, for concealed carry dot com, and then I'm also the producer for the concealed carry podcast. So I wear a lot of hats, do a lot of different things, but primarily I focus a lot on Mount man Medical. We sell trauma kits that I designed based on my experience as a United States Navy Corbin and an EMT.

When I was in the military I spent a lot of time with the Marine Corps over in Afghanistan. My bread and butter tends to be tactical medicine. I love that the most. Anytime that I can incorporate medicine with fighting in some way, I really enjoy that kind of aspect and that approach.

Coming up through the military, I've changed my philosophies substantially and I've needed my trauma kit a lot more often than I've needed my gun, even carrying one for my job on a regular basis. Trauma kits were always much more useful and important, and something that I tend to see fairly often in the gun community is that they focus very heavily on firearms training, which, of course, is an important aspect of combat, but only a part of combat. There's a lot of different aspects to being able to fight well and defend yourself and your community, and medicine is definitely a second part of that. After the bullets are done flying, you've got to take care of yourself and maybe any bystanders or family members that might have been hit in that process. So if you're going to have the tools to punch holes in people, then you're going to need the tools to patch holes in people. That's generally the way I like to approach things.

All right, awesome. So we'll jump into the first question. What are some of the must have items for your first aid trauma kit that you look at being most prevalent?

There are two. The most essential items are two and it's going to be your tourniquet. Obviously Everybody knows what a tourniquet is. It's one of those fantastic items for controlling bleeding on your arms and your legs. It's a quick way to shut off all bleeding, no matter where it is. If it's on the extremities, you can just shut it off with a tourniquet. So it's very quick and effective to apply and it doesn't take a whole lot of training to learn how to apply a tourniquet.

So tourniquets are your first go-to. If you don't have anything in your trauma kit, at least have a tourniquet, and that's better than nothing. But additionally, the second most important item is going to be wound packing material. Because as soon as you have a wound, that's any place other than your arms and legs, in your junctions. So a junction is any place where two body parts come together, so my neck meets my torso, so this is a junction in the armpits and then also in the groin. You can't get a tourniquet up there to control that type of bleeding. So the only other thing that you can use to fix this is wound packing. It helps a lot to have a pressure dressing to keep that wound packing in place, but that's not an essential item. So you can hold that wound packing just with direct pressure, with just your hands.

But the very essential thing is to have something that you can pack down into that wound which is going to compress the artery and control bleeding.

That way, a lot of people think that if you're going to use quick clot or kyto gauze or one of these other hemostatic agents, that you're controlling the bleeding with the hemostatic agent, and that's not the case.

What you're really controlling the bleeding with is the mechanical pressure compressing that artery and clamping it off and preventing it from bleeding. So what we want to do is we want to pack as much gauze down into that wound as we possibly can to control that bleeding. So since bleeding is the thing that's going to kill you the quickest, we want to make sure that we've got all of the items set aside to handle that the most efficiently, and so making sure you have multiple tourniquets, because you could have bilateral wounds on both of your hands or both of your legs, so being able to treat those is important. But then, on top of that, having some gauze that you can pack down into the wound, and it's beneficial to have kyto gauze or quick clot because it adds that added bonus of the hemostatic agent. But really what we're looking for is that mechanical pressure down on that artery.

Okay, all right, that sounds good and I know we'll be discussing a little bit more in detail about the kits as we go through these questions. But when considering a first aid trauma training, what are some of the most important skills that concealed carriers need to know? Does it include sci Civ in an exclusive crash screen? Yeah, so let's take another kinda zero mentor.

Okay, first and foremost I'm going to say direct pressure. You can save a lot of lives with no gear just using direct pressure. A lot of lives have been saved accidentally because people accidentally put direct pressure on the wound, trying to soak up blood with the paper towels or whatever they've got nearby. And our goal is not to soak up blood. That's not really going to help our casualty. Our goal is to put direct pressure on it. But in the course of putting those paper towels on the wound to soak up blood, they accidentally hold direct pressure on the wound and save that person's life. So if we can do that intentionally, that's even better. If you don't have any medical gear whatsoever and somebody is bleeding very badly in front of you and you're worried that they're going to die, direct pressure could save their life. So all you need to do is maybe use the palm of your hand so that you can localize that pressure a little more efficiently, and then you're just going to put both of your hands, like you're going to do chest compressions Same kind of basic concept and you're just going to lean all of your weight down onto that wound to keep as much blood in the body as you possibly can, and then you're just going to hold that until somebody can get to you with a medical kit or EMS arrives with tourniquets to help you out. So, first and foremost, the most important thing that you can learn as a concealed carrier is direct pressure. Listen that to your kids, grandkids, nephews and nieces. That's always an important thing as well. If they're ever out and about and they get into some trouble, they'll know how to help their brothers and sisters out and that kind of thing. So I like to try to teach that as often as possible, because it's a very effective way of controlling bleeding if you don't have a trauma kit.

So a lot of people will think about trying to improvise a tourniquet, right? I have a video on my YouTube channel at mountmanmedicalcom showing how to improvise tourniquets effectively. But the problem is is those tourniquets take a while for you to make, right? I know how to do it. I've done it a lot and I'm pretty good at it, but still it's going to take me a while to find every item I need to make a good tourniquet and then construct it and then apply it.

The whole time that this is happening, what's happening to our cataly? We're bleeding out, right. So, yes, improvising tourniquets and other medical equipment might be necessary given the situation. So it's a good skill to know, but we don't want to be relying on that. If we can help it, we want to be able to carry the equipment with us that can shut off that bleeding as quickly and efficiently as possible, and that's why having ready-made tourniquets and wound packing and a trauma kit standing by is one of those important items. So direct pressure and then also understanding basic human anatomy and physiology. It doesn't have to get complicated. We don't have to be doctors at this, but if we have a basic understanding of how the human body works, it makes it much easier for us to think outside the box and problem solve.

Okay, all right, pretty good information there. So are some training curriculums better than others when it comes to first aid trauma training? If so, how do you know which one is better, or how do you vet them out?

Pretty often. I like to see something that is along the lines of some sort of official certification, like stop the bleed or something like that that shows that they are allowed to give this type of training. But there's a lot of different instructors out there that are teaching similar skills, but for different people. For instance, there's lots of people out there who teach stop the bleed courses, but those stop the bleed courses are going to be very basic. They're going to be from stop the bleed instructors who might be EMTs and that kind of thing, and the amount of experience that they have is going to differ quite a bit. So you might have somebody who's able to give you the good information about how to control bleeding, but they might not have a whole lot of experience on other aspects or other types of loopholes that might get thrown to you in the middle of this situation. So I think the best thing that you could do is probably pay close attention to whoever the instructor is and what their credentials are and what their experience levels are. For the most part, stop the bleed is a decent course that teaches you all of the things that you need to know to control bleeding, so that's a great place to start.

At Mt Medical we also have a free emergency trauma response course. That's like the stop the bleed but kind of on steroids. I hit a lot of things that I think are very important to understanding knowledge medicine at a very basic level. My whole goal when I created that course was I've only got an hour and a half to talk to somebody. What do I need to tell them in that short amount of time? That's going to help save their life or someone that they love.

So I try to put the course together a lot like that and I've had doctors, physicians, assistants, tactical medics, paramedics, trauma nurses that have reviewed that course and say that it's a fantastic course. So I'm really proud of it. So that could be an option. If you have anybody out there that wants to learn for free, we don't charge anything for it. It's important to me to sell trauma kits, but to people who know how to use them right, it doesn't do them or me any good to sell them trauma kits that they don't know how to use. So we have a free trauma course so that once they get their kit, they can watch this with their friends and family, practice little techniques and then move on with some good skills to take care of themselves and their family.

Okay so that's online Long story short. So that's an online class.

Yes, absolutely Online, totally free. You just put in your email and then you get to take the whole course and then you get a little certificate at the end of it. So that might be an option for you, especially if you're trying to train up a lot of people. Pretty often I'll get contacted by various organizations, especially church security groups and things like that, asking if they can take the course with their security team, which is something I love to hear, because then they can just put one screen up, pull out the kit and practice on each other and watch all the things, and that's a quick and easy way to get through it. I've also had some Boy Scouts who I had a scout master come up and said that he makes his Eagle Scouts take my course before they're allowed to get their bleeding control badge. So that was a cool thing for me. I used to be a Boy Scout so when I heard that, that tickled me pretty. That tickled me so much I was really happy to hear that.

All right, something I had just thought of that we didn't include on the questions. But knowing I get occasionally people that are timid in wanting to take first aid because the liability in some areas I know a lot of states have the Good Samaritan law and stuff that will cover you for trying to save someone's life but a lot of people are become timid because they're afraid of that pending lawsuit. Of course we know in today's society everybody will sue at the drop of a hat for a hanging nail basically. So if someone was to throw that objection up there, they're afraid of getting a lawsuit or something or not considering the Good Samaritan. What was your rebuttal to that?

Well, I mean, the Good Samaritan law is in place just for that account, so that people aren't scared to help somebody when they need it. Now, if you, as long as you, are doing normal things that anybody can do, you're going to be fine. Applying a tourniquet, wound, packing direct pressure this is something anybody can do, that you don't have to be a doctor to do these things, so the Good Samaritan law will cover you. You will not be in any trouble if you help somebody with that. Now, where you start to have issues is when you start to get into things that you have not been properly trained or credentialed to do, for example, needle decompression.

Say, somebody has a sucking chest wound and now they are starting to get attention to methorax and they need to have pressure relieved in their chest. If you relieve that pressure and you don't know what you're doing, and then you injure that person, that casualty, more than what they already were now, you're being held liable, right, because this is not something that everybody has been trained to do. This is a very specialized procedure, especially with something like a crike. Cutting someone's throat open so that you can put in a tube might be a very important way to take care of a casualty in an emergency situation. But if that's a surgical procedure, right, and if you don't understand how to do that, that's you don't want to be doing it.

Now some people will watch a couple of YouTube videos that are like I got this no big deal, and I admire that level of confidence, but I'm also very wary of it. You know like that's a rough place to be. So what I tell people is as long as you're not doing anything that you're not, it's not over the top. You know you're not doing anything crazy. As long as you're doing chest seals, tourniquets, wound packing, direct pressure, that kind of thing, then you're going to be just fine.

Okay, all right, thanks for answering that. Add on questions that surprised, see. Thank you. When. What criteria do you suggest someone new to first aid use when trying to find the right training and instructor? What are some things that you use to vet out them? And you kind of briefly discussed some of it earlier. But if someone's wanting to do that, what would they look for?

So there's a couple of different options that I can recommend to you. One is, as you can, come to the Guardian Conference. Concealedcarriecom puts on a conference every year this next year is going to be our fourth year, I think and I put on a hostile trauma medicine class at the Guardian Conference. They have a bunch of other very well-known shooting instructors that will be teaching there Riley Bowman from concealedcarriecom I know you know him, he's going to be teaching there and a bunch of other people. So that's a quick way to come in and get rifle, pistol and shotgun training. They've got combatives, they've got law, and then, of course, I do the medical aspect of things.

So, other than that, there aren't that many people out there that are putting on medical classes like this. Some of the top ones that I know of is Carrie Davis from Dark Angel Medical. He puts on a pretty good class. I like a lot of his content. He's a very knowledgeable instructor. And then there's also Caleb Causey with his Lone Star Medics Caleb Causey on Lone Star Medics and he also travels around and teaches classes as well. So those are two other options besides me that you might be able to look into, but those are the ones that I come into contact the most. Those tend to be the ones that I see around giving out most of the classes. Besides that, generally you're going to see, stop the bleed. Courses are probably going to be your next available option for finding a good instructor that way, okay.

Lead that, lead that, actually To stop the bleed. I have an instructor here. The teach is out of Delaree Beach and pretty much any location here in South Florida by the end of the day, so it's a good program.

Okay, oh, so you've got somebody nearby that teaches all that stuff for you.

Yeah, he's a trauma medic, so he's been doing it for a very, very long time. He's got a lot of experience, so he's a great instructor and he goes above and beyond. Like you said, it's not just basic.

Yeah yeah. That's what I like the most is when I run into especially paramedics. I love paramedics very, very knowledgeable, especially some of these very experienced people that are out on these rigs all day, every day. I respect that a lot. I've got a lot of friends who are paramedics and I think they do a great job.

Okay, yeah, I teach the USCCA's curriculum and emergency first aid and then also, having been in law enforcement and military, I've got a lot of first responder training the basic stuff. So I try to teach that as much as I can. But, like I said, a lot of people they just don't invest in the time to take the training because they don't think that it's something that they need. Hey, I've got 911 or the Calvary will come, and sometimes you got to jump in before the Calvary gets there to save.

Absolutely, I think the average response.

No, can I just mention something real quick. A lot of times people think of it as something like severe, like a gunshot wound. Unfortunately, any type of accident can happen. I had a gentleman who was an elderly gentleman riding a bicycle and he fell. He scratched up his knee but he was on blood thinners and he was bleeding really bad just from a bicycle fall and if you're on blood thinners that can be a very serious situation. So it's not just something like a gunshot wound, it can be a fall. Or I had a mirror fall down the length of time and the glass was like a sharp edge and went through my cap and that reason Okay, it was like what we've talked with Clint the other day.

Clint Macro, I didn't know if you were through, you kind of froze up there a little bit, but it was like what we talked with Clint the other day when we interviewed him with his range, where the person had a I think it was a slide bite and they patched it up and everything. Then he was back on the firing line and started notice he was dripping blood and the question then came up hey, are you on blood thinners? And yeah, I am. Well, let's, let's get you to the hospital. So, yeah, Knowing a little bit of history whenever you can, especially for an instructor or somebody that's teaching something where you're likely to get injured, is very helpful.

I have a checklist. I asked that question if anybody's on blood thinners in my classroom just for the safety reasons you know, and I tell them. I'm not trying to pry into your medical history, but I need to know that if you're on anything like that, what to tell the medics when they arrive? So it's very important to address that issue.

Yeah, very important. I'm glad you're doing that. That's a mark of an experienced, experienced instructor, because that's one of the things that I talk to all the time. I do a lot of range coverages for medical. So one of the top things that I'm always doing is I do a safety brief before we start off the training day and I say, hey, if there's anybody here that needs to come up and talk to me and tell me that you've got some sort of medical condition you know, I need to know that so that whenever I'm working on you and you're unconscious, I've got some ideas about why you know, and so that's one of those important things to kind of pass on, especially in these range training days.

So one of the things that we've done at Mount man Medical is because we do so much work with the Second Amendment community, we wanted to have a range medicine course, which we have up on the website.

I think it's cost like four bucks or something like that, so it's very cheap. But I did it in along with PacMed Solutions, which this is the company that produces the soft tea tourniquets, so one of these really big medical companies. I went out to their facility and we filmed a range safety course with a special operations medic, and so that course is available online at Mount man Medical as well and that'll kind of walk you through. If you're a firearms instructor or you train often on the firearms range, some of the things that you need to consider for like medical purposes and things like that. In addition to that, we also have a form that we fill out or that you can that comes along with the course and it's a range medical safety checklist. So you just print that off and then you run down all of the various aspects of handling medicine on a range, such as where's your closest trauma center, appropriate phone numbers and that kind of thing, and you can download that, fill that out and have that available to you and your students out whenever you're training.

I'm going to take you on that for sure. I'll definitely print that out.

One thing that I like to do is, during the registration for my course, I'll give them their packet to fill out and everything, and then I'll make mention of hey, if you've got a medical issue that I need to be aware of and you don't want to tell it out in the middle of the class. After you get finished with your information, filling out the packet, we'll take a short break for you to do whatever, and then that'll give you an opportunity to come up and say, hey, I got this issue and did one of the now sitting class or something. So, just a little bit of privacy, which I get.

Absolutely. Yeah, you've got to have that privacy right. Not everybody wants to shout out that they're not feeling so good and that kind of thing and that's cool. But also one of the problems that I've had is I'll put that out there and then some people won't come up and talk to me anyway.

I had this guy at the last Guardian Conference this last year who he had had eight heart surgeries and he didn't tell me anything about that. And at one point he was having trouble breathing. He was bent over in the tripod position trying to have a difficulty breathing. And I saw that and I was like, oh, that doesn't look good. I should go talk to him. He was in his maybe early to mid-60s or so. And I go up to talk to him and I'm like, hey, are you doing OK? And he didn't even want to talk to me. I say, are you doing all right? And he's like, yeah, I'm fine, leave me alone. And I was like, ok, come to find out from his grandson later that he had had a certain number of heart surgeries not very long ago and he was sitting there smoking a pack a day. And it's like, man, all right, man, well, good luck, I'll do my best for you, but you're not helping me at all here. That's just how it goes sometimes, yeah.

OK, Next question we had was when it comes to first aid, what should people look for as far as quality and durability in products?

So the quality and durability thing is a pretty big issue, especially since a lot of medical equipment is coming out of China and it's not very high quality. They're pretending that it's high quality, they're selling it as high quality but it is not. For instance, the tourniquets are not very good at all. They are trying to copy the cat tourniquet and they copy it in form but not so well in function. A lot of these tourniquets are being bought in pallet forms and shipped to places like the Ukraine, and people in the Ukraine are pulling them out and just snapping them in half because they're just garbage products. So paying attention to where you get your gear is very important.

I had a paramedic friend of mine here at a very large hospital in the Denver area who was running a call where a man had been shot in the lake and was bleeding out. And so he arrives on scene, grabs a tourniquet out of the bin in his ambulance and runs up and starts applying it to the casualty when it breaks in his hand. The windlass just snaps and luckily my friend had a real cat tourniquet in his cargo pocket. He pulls this out, applies it to the casualty and saves his life. But he didn't know his ambulance company didn't even realize that they had stocked their ambulance with counterfeit cat tourniquets. And I don't think it's being done maliciously. At least I hope it isn't in the way that they're just trying to save a buck and they know what they're doing. But they're trying to save money anyway. I think that these are just people that don't understand that there are fake tourniquets out there and they have to be aware of that. They see a good price. The counterfeit cat tourniquets are coming in at $10, as opposed to like $36 for a cat tourniquet, so it's obviously cheaper, but in my opinion it's not worth my life.

Pretty often I'll have people say well, this tourniquet works good enough for me, all right. Well, that's totally on you. You get to do what you want with your life, but if it's me and my kids, that's not something I'm going to trust for us. So paying attention to where you get your gear is one of those important things, because you want to get them from a reputable company that's not going to give you some sort of garbage that's not going to work for you when you need it most. There are some kits that I've run into out there that are produced by very reputable companies that are still stocking their kits with these counterfeit cat tourniquets, and I think it's just because they don't know.

So if you have a medical kit that you have purchased, I recommend going in and taking a look at the tourniquets to make sure that they're real. I have a couple of videos on my YouTube channel talking about the differences and how you can spot a fake from a real one, if that's something that you're interested in. But primarily, I would recommend that you don't get your medical gear from off of amazoncom. That's where a lot of the counterfeits are at. I recommend that you go with a company that sells a kit that has North American rescue, dynarex, tacmet solutions, hyphen, chest seals. These are all companies that have been proven to work in combat. They have a massive amount of data. They're items that I have used personally, so I know that they're going to work. Oh yeah, a company that sells reputable products is going to be one of those important things. To try to stay away from Amazon to help a little bit.

Yeah, our Timu or I was going to say Timu yeah, don't get him off a Timu.

Yeah, anything coming out of China is going to be sketchy, in my opinion.

So we've mentioned the importance of a tourniquet and I'm having some prior first aid and emergency medical training. I know that there are several different styles of tourniquets. Would you mind going into the pros and cons of the different styles and what your recommendations are for tourniquets?

Yeah, I should have brought it. I should have brought my tourniquet with me, but I didn't. I could have had some examples here for you, but the cat tourniquet is your, the one that's going to be the most recognizable. That is the tourniquet that you will see on every cop duty belt. It's going to be in pretty much every ambulance and everywhere. It's a fantastic tourniquet. It's a hook and loop, so it uses Velcro and a lot of people like the Velcro aspect of the cat tourniquet because it makes it easier to self-apply.

So every tourniquet, in my opinion, has its own role. Pretty often people will ask me what's your favorite tourniquet? And I don't have a favorite, I just have a favorite role for that tourniquet. Right, for example, the cat tourniquet is much easier to self-apply, so I'm going to wear that on my duty belt, my war belt, or on my plate carrier, so if I get hurt I can pull that off and I can attach it to my arms or legs and get that tied off really quick. But if you are going to oh my gosh, I just lost my train of thought there- what were we?

just talking about.

The different styles of tourniquet Different styles of tourniquet.

Thank you, that was weird. Okay, so the cat tourniquet is the one I'm going to use for me, but if I'm going to be working on other people say I'm a medic and I have a medical bag I would prefer to have the soft tee tourniquet because you can pack those down much smaller and you can get more of them into your trauma kit than you would their cat tourniquet. So I will be able to get 20 soft tees into my trauma kit as opposed to only five cat tourniquets. So it helps to extend my resources a little bit because the footprint is a little smaller. So, in my opinion, the cat tourniquet and the soft tee are the top tourniquets on the market. I have used both of them. I know they're going to work fantastic for you. They just have different roles and there's a ton of other types of tourniquets out there on the market today. We've been talking a lot of time talking about all of the ones and rows and the cons. Actually, I should probably do a YouTube video on that. I think that would be interesting.

I always wonder the same, but that's what I have to do. Is the soft tee?

Yep, that's soft tee. Yeah, that's my personal go-to if I'm taking care of other people when I'm going somewhere and I need so say. We sell these ankle trauma kits. It's essentially just an ankle holster but you pack it full of medical gear and in that I prefer to have the soft tee tourniquet because it's so small. The cat tourniquet is going to be awkward and bulky, but that soft tee that you have will be able to pack down a lot more efficiently into that. Something smaller, a smaller kit like that ankle I fact.

Okay, all right, appreciate that. Do you have something crystal?

Yeah, I agree with you on that too. It's more compact because a lot of times they're so big and bulky. So in your everyday life, especially here in Florida summertime it's hot you don't wanna have a bunch of stuff, I don't wanna carry it back back with the trauma kit. So if I can get something that's smaller, it would be a lot easier.

Yeah, more like-. Absolutely.

Yeah, that's. One of the main difficulties with medical gear is that you have to carry it somehow right, and so what I do, I don't carry stuff on me. I have a backpack that I carry around with my like charging cables and my laptop and all that kind of stuff, so I'll have something in there, but I'm not gonna be carrying something on my person. I got so much stuff in my pockets and all that kind of stuff. I like to use my vehicle as, like my, my command and control point. Right, If I can get back to my vehicle. I've got lots more gear and equipment and things that kind of help out that I don't wanna be carrying on me all the time.

So I always recommend that you have a trauma kit in your vehicle, which is important for any any car accidents that you might come up on, but also good for you to be able to get back to your vehicle if there's something happening nearby. Pretty often you're not very far away from your car. It's a quicker run. You know where that trauma kit is underneath of your seat and you can also send somebody to go get it. Making sure that you put it in an easily reached place and an easily identifiable bag is important. You might be somebody holding direct pressure and you say, hey, go get the trauma kit. It's on the passenger seat of my car. They run over to go get it. They know what they're looking for, so that might be a good option for you.

Okay, yeah, I've been looking to kind of cause I carry a kit with me, not not necessarily on me, but I've been looking to do some sort of iFAC, like an ankle kit and everything to kind of have on me, just so if something were to happen, I could maybe initially take care of something while somebody's going to get my regular kit out of the car, out of the range office or something like that, and I it's something that I've been looking at and then with a lot of people, especially in the heat and the ladies with purses, cross body bags, fanny packs and stuff you can carry a small EDC kit, set up, no, in those without too much of a discomfort or extra weight. So I've been really pushing that to people, at least having something for the immediate concern and then addressing the superficial things later.

I would love to see more mama's carrying trauma kits in their diaper bags. Yeah, I'm sorry I cut you off there, crystal. What was that?

That was one of the questions I had too, when we were going back to keeping it in your vehicle. It's really hot in Florida and I? What is the long depth, the life? What is the word I used to be for? I drove late, it's shelf life.

Okay, shelf life.

When they're in your vehicle. It's really hot and it seems like I know my gloves melt, so what is the proper storage for some items?

Usually. I recommend that you just try to keep it out of the direct sunlight, so like underneath of a maybe a seat or something like that. Sometimes people will put their trauma kits on like the back seat organizers, have you seen those? So that it's strapped to the back of their seat. I don't generally recommend that because of smashing grabs. Trauma kits look expensive and if you've got cool looking expensive tactical gear hanging out there in the open for anybody to see, they might just smash your window and see if you've got any guns in there too kind of a thing. So I like to keep the trauma kit kind of hidden a little bit more underneath of, like the passenger seat or even underneath of my the driver's seat, so it's quick and easy to access. But as long as you're keeping it out of this direct sunlight it should be okay for a long time.

Pretty often they design these items to be used out in Afghanistan and in the sun and that kind of thing. But after a while the UV light will degrade the material to the point where the shelf light that's not going to be usable for you. So generally what I recommend is if you have your gear out in the open and it is exposed to direct sunlight, it's going to have to be more of a case by case basis. You're going to have to look at it and just decide for yourself whether or not it's grungy or not. But if it's not exposed to the sunlight, then the general rule of thumb is about three years or so. Every item in the trauma kit has its own various shelf life, and so you can go in and pay attention to that, but it generally falls around three years or so. However, if I'm in a bad situation and all I've got is expired medical here, I'm going to move that work.

I'm going to be like I wish I could save you, but this tourniquet is expired by five months or something. So if things are sketchy then I'm going to just use that stuff anyway. But if I have the pre-planning involved, I'm definitely going to make sure that I'm upgrading that, because I don't want anything failing when I'm trying to use this on my kids. So great question.

Okay, last one that I have and then Crystal's got another one, but should people consider refresher courses to stay up to date with trauma and first aid protocols? And of course I know the answer to that, but what's your recommendation? Absolutely.

I think one of the things I think that people really struggle with the most is that they feel like medical is hard, like it's difficult to do. It's not they. Let people like me do it. Anybody can do it right, it's not that complicated. One of the things that I've noticed a lot is I'm a well above average shooter.

I shoot competition and tactical things on a very regular basis and one of the things that I've noticed the big difference between firearms training and medical training is medical training is essentially I mean, you can take my online course in an hour and a half and be able to take care of somebody in a really bad situation. But firearms training, you have to stay on top of so many different physical skills like sight alignment, grip trigger control, all of these different things that you have to work on constantly or those skills will start to diminish. Right. Medical, however, there's a lot less mechanical skills that you need to learn and more mental information that you need to have ready to process. So, in my opinion, I would love to see people take a new trauma course, maybe four times a year, quarterly, but I think you could probably get away with twice a year, as long as you are paying attention and you're working through everything and you're refreshing yourself on how all these things work. I think twice a year would be the minimum that I would recommend.

Okay, yeah, because I know that from my time in law enforcement first responder, taking CPR and everything. Whenever I first got into it it was the breath compression ratio. And now there's what I have heard from a lot of people is the breasts aren't. I won't say that they're not important, but it's more important to keep that compression's going because it keeps the blood going or circulating and stuff. Where American Heart, I think it has changed some of their protocol or not protocol, but the way that they do it.

And I just know that with evolution of new technology and stuff, I've really urged people to kind of stay on top of it, because things do change. They realize that things could be done better or no, that they've discovered new ways of doing handling, something like with the change in the chest compressions and everything. So that's what I really push for people is, we just never know what knows one. No, hey, I took a course three years ago and I remember stuff, but I don't remember exactly the. You know the steps of each thing and if we don't, it's again. To me it's like if you don't practice it, you're. It's not going to be in that memory where it's just going to be able to be recalled instantly in a especially in a time of stress, because as firearms instructors we know that in a self defense mode we get the tunnel vision, we lose dexterity with our hands and stuff at times. So just making it where it becomes second nature to us, I think is really important in our training and staying on top of things.

Absolutely. I know. One of the things that a lot of people maybe don't realize is like how, how quickly and how often medicine changes. You know, like so, so often throughout my career I have gone from being trained on a thing and they'll tell me you always, always, always do this. And then a month or two later they'll say they'll come back and be like you never, ever, ever, do that, you know, and so this is.

This is one of those reasons why it's important to kind of stay on top of this stuff is because things change. For example, you know, one of the most detrimental rumors out there is that you will lose your armor leg, will need to be amputated if you apply a tourniquet Right. This is a very standard thing that they have said for many, many years and they don't believe this anymore. This is something that has gone out the window for quite a few, maybe 10 or 15 years. This is something that we don't believe anymore, but still I hear this every.

Every time I talk about tourniquets, people are saying, oh well, yeah, I mean you might save their life, but they're going to have to have that armor leg amputated. This is not the case. I mean, if you read the current literature on tourniquets and how all this stuff goes like I like to do to make sure I'm staying on top of this stuff is the general rule of thumb is two hours. You can have a tourniquet applied for up to two hours and have little to no cell damage or nerve damage whatsoever. In fact, they actually had a Navy SEAL that was recorded at having an tourniquet applied for up to six hours and they were still able to save that limb.

So one of the important things is making sure that you're using correct medical procedures. That's current, you know. Otherwise, people have been reluctant to apply this tourniquet and they're like well, maybe the bleeding will just stop on its own, let's wait and see if it stops. That way we don't have to risk this person getting their leg amputated and unfortunately that's gotten a lot of people killed right Because people are sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting and then the bleeding is uncontrolled and that person perishes. So making sure that we understand what we're doing and why and that it's the most current procedure is like one of those important parts.

Yeah, it's like with talking about the tourniquets. I've come through several phases of tourniquet usage, where tourniquets were thought to be the last resort before you use them, and now they're saying putting them on earlier, as soon as you can, will save a life. And then also the. I was in a time when I first started with my first responders and stuff, where if, whenever you did decide to use a tourniquet, you had to loosen it to blood flow and then tighten it back up and no, that's something that we don't do. That, at least on our end, if the medical professionals are trained, if that's needed to do that, but typically that's not something that is important or that needs to be done anymore.

So right, yeah, and making sure you're not getting your information on medical training from your buddy, who was a special forces medic in Vietnam. Like I hear that all the time, you know. Like, well, my buddy, who was a special forces medic in Vietnam, said this is how he would do things. And I'm like, well, I mean no disrespect to your, was that?

I say times have changed.

Times have changed, right. I mean, I still get the same thing with firearms training. You know like I've done my share of firearms training back in the day and I've always struggled with those students who have their egos and they're like you can't teach me anything. Oh, why not? Like well, because I was in the army, like back in the 70s, and I was like well, gunfighting has changed a little bit here, brother, you know there's some things that you might want to pay attention to. You know things are different and they're like nope, I'm good, like all right, yeah, you do. You boo, boo.

Yeah, it's like in my women's course with the firearms. I get a lot of ladies that come and do the the tea cup.

Get a tea cup. That's so popular.

And I've had some that I know they said well, my uncle trained me, they were in law enforcement or they were in the military in the 60s, 70s and that's that. Well, things have changed. I said, no, I don't necessarily like the cup and saucer, the tea cup method, but you know, I get them to try the two handed grip and usually they become a lot better in control when they use that two handed grip. And the only time whenever I was in law enforcement of that I ever used the cup and saucer, the tea cup method was whenever I was carrying shooting my backup, my snub nose revolver. Just because of the small J frame handle on it, it's hard to get a good two handed grip.

So yeah, you don't want to get your thumbs out there in front of that chamber Right.

Yeah, okay guys, my iPad's going to shut off on us here in a second, so if we could disconnect it, you know why.

Okay, so I'm going to jump into the last question. That you had, crystal, it was, you know. You got in front of you, or do you want me to read it?

No, I have it here.

Okay.

How do you approach the design of trauma kits for specific activities or hobbies, considering the unique risk associated with each? So, as far as like a trauma kit for the range versus the golfers.

Right, yeah, so I think this is a fantastic topic, because not every trauma kit is going to be perfect for every situation. Now, I try to set up our trauma kits to handle the most common issues and the things that are going to kill you the quickest. So you know, bleeding control, chest seals and that kind of stuff. But if you're doing other types of dangerous activities, then you want to make sure that your trauma kit is set up for that in a way, right? I think one of the most important things about being alive is it's fun doing dangerous things. It is you have to go out and live a crazy life or else, in my opinion, you're not doing it right, right, you know, and I want to be doing these things long, as long as possible. So how can I do these things safely, so I can continue to do these dangerous activities that I love so much? Right, and shooting is very safe, right, but it does carry its own risks. So what are some of the things that I can do to make sure that I'm stalking my trauma kit to handle those types of situations? And generally, I'm going to walk through what I'm doing and then think about the most likely injuries I'm going to sustain. For instance, for mountain biking, maybe you don't need as much bleeding control, but you need more fracture issues. If you have a splint and some gauze so that you can wrap various fractures and things like that, that's going to be a lot more important to you. Or say, you're going to the range where you might take a GSW to the chest and you need to patch your chest wound. We want to make sure that we're carrying our chest seals. So walking through what it is that you're doing, that's kind of sketchy. And making sure you're planning ahead of time for each one of those events is how you're going to handle that. For example, I did some. I was on a mountain bike podcast a little while ago. This guy has a big mountain biking channel and he wanted to talk about trauma kits for mountain bikers and one of the things that I recommended for him were things like not just moldable splints but also like finger splints and things like that, because often if you fall off your bike, you can get a hand or a finger caught in a root and you can break that finger or the limb. So making sure that you have fracture stuff on top of your other bleeding control items is one of those important parts of it. Just walk your way back down whatever is going on and then try to plan accordingly.

Now if you have people in your audience who are looking for a specific trauma kit for whatever activity that they're doing, they can reach out to me at mountmanmedicalcom and I can walk them through a customized trauma kit for them. So pretty often I'll have people who will hit me up and say you know, I do this, this and what would you recommend? And I'll walk them through what I would recommend for that kit. So that's a pretty easy thing that I'll do. I don't charge people for that, it's just something I kind of enjoy doing. They can send me an email or whatever the case is, and I'll just reply to them and just give them some recommendations of what I think would help. But that's how I would approach that, okay.

Yeah, even for heat stroke. You get out there and it's too hot something that could help you on a situation where Absolutely.

That is a great point. I mean, it doesn't have to be just medical equipment. You need to have electrolytes and that kind of thing. It also kind of comes down to your own personal needs. You know, like we were just talking about, we have people out here who have their own medical conditions. If you have a trauma kit set up and maybe you need certain medications put in there, you know, for emergencies that might be an important thing for you. Or if you have somebody in your family who has a medical condition, making sure that you're prepped for that is an essential aspect.

I also usually recommend they have these cards that you can fill out. We actually sell them at Mt Mt Medical, but there are cards that you can put all of your medical information on and then you have it in your wallet or whatever the case is. And then when somebody shows up EMTs or paramedics show up all you got to do is hand them this card and they EMTs and paramedics love it. Every time they get this card with all of the patient's information already on it when they show up at the scene. It's like their favorite thing. So that's a really beneficial thing to kind of help you make the best out of a bad situation.

Okay, chris will die, so yeah, we lost her. Yeah, we lost her, but yeah it's. You know the kids are going to be customizable, they're going to be unique to that certain situation. Your household kit is going to be different from your range kit, from your camping gear kit to your hiking kit. So you got to think ahead, like you said, what's the purpose of this kit that I'm making or have, and customize it to the things that you would experience in those situations?

So Absolutely. I know at Mount Matt Medical we try to anticipate a lot of that. So we have a camping kit, we have a hiking kit, we've got a in your vehicle kit, we've got in your house kit. We've got everything for every situation essentially. I mean, we're always adding new ones. I would really love to come out with a canine trauma kit. I think that would be really cool helping our canine officers out and just our pets. You know, sometimes you're running around in the woods with your dog and your dog gets injured badly. You know, having a trauma kit that can be used for them and you, you know it could be one of those good things, yeah.

Okay, all right. So to get your time today, one of the last questions we have that I didn't include on here, but it's a simple one, or I say it's a simple one what is something that you do to decompress, wind down from your daily activities, that gives you relaxation?

I think jujitsu, it doesn't really wind me down so much. But in the moment it doesn't wind me down because I'm very I'm fighting pretty heavy. But afterwards, after I'm all done, the peace that my mind has and the relaxation my body feels after working hard like that, I think is a very comforting thing. Working hard and almost dying, you know, because this guy is trying to kill me, Right, you know, it puts a lot of things into perspective for me and helps me to kind of maintain a good balance in my mind. So I would say I think that would be my primary way.

Okay, all right, excellent, thank you. So if somebody wanted to get in touch with you or find out more about Mountain man Medical, how would they get in touch with you?

Well, you can go over to mountmanmedicalcom and check out our Yellowstone and Wind River Trauma Kids. I'm also on YouTube at mountmanmedicalcom. I'm on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. I'm on all the places. Don't forget to head over to concealedcarrycom. We have the concealed carry podcast that you can check out, where we also talk about this kind of stuff more gun related but I always work in some medical stuff because that's my bread and butter, right? So, yeah, you can find me at all of those places. Check out the Guardian Conference. Come out to a class and we'll get you trained up.

Okay, all right, sounds good. So that's it for this time today and look forward to maybe having you back on and maybe we'll talk some different topics or see what kind of things are new and going on in the medical trauma first aid realm.

Absolutely. I had a blast. Thanks for having me on. You got a great show.

I appreciate it. Thank you, brian. Have a good day sir.

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