In an emergency, the nearest medical help may be far away, overwhelmed, or unreachable by phone. Roads close. Pharmacies lose power and shut their doors. The people in the room are the response for a while. This page is about being useful in that room: knowing what everyone takes, having what a first aid situation needs, and having learned the few skills that matter most.
It does not give medical advice. Doses, what to do with a specific condition, and how long a medicine lasts outside a refrigerator are questions for your prescriber and pharmacist. What to put in a first aid kit is on the Ready.gov and Red Cross lists cited below. How to help someone is taught in the courses named on this page.
Why it matters
Most households already contain a medical emergency waiting to happen in an outage: a medicine that must stay cold, a machine that needs power, a prescription that runs out on the wrong day, a person who cannot say what they take. Most households also contain no one who has practiced what to do for a bad cut, a choking child, or someone who has passed out. Both gaps close cheaply, and closing them is worth more than any supply on the shelf.
What to have
A written medication list, on paper, for every person in the house: what they take, the dose exactly as printed on the label, why, who prescribed it, and which pharmacy fills it. Add allergies, conditions a responder should know about, and the doctor’s number. Keep a copy in the go-bag, one on the refrigerator, and one with someone outside the home.
A reserve of prescriptions, where your prescriber and pharmacy allow it. Some plans and pharmacies permit an early refill or a longer supply for emergency preparedness; ask. Rotate it so the oldest is used first. Never stop or ration a medicine on your own to build a reserve.
A plan for refrigerated medicine and powered equipment. Ask the pharmacist how your specific medicine is kept when the refrigerator fails and for how long it stays usable, and ask the equipment supplier about backup power. Power explains what to arrange with your utility.
A first aid kit you have opened. Ready.gov’s kit page and the Red Cross both list what belongs in one. Open yours, learn what each thing is for, replace what has expired, and add whatever your household specifically needs, such as an epinephrine auto-injector or extra of a child’s inhaler, as prescribed.
A bleeding-control kit or its contents, kept where you can reach it fast, once you have taken the course that teaches how to use it.
Copies of insurance cards and the medication list in the go-bag, with any advance directives. Documents & Money, later in this section, covers the rest.
Glasses, hearing aid batteries, mobility aids, and whatever else a person cannot function without. A spare pair of glasses in the go-bag is the kind of thing nobody misses until the day they need it.
Skills that matter more than supplies
First aid and CPR/AED. The American Red Cross teaches these in short courses, in person and blended, and its course finder is cited below. Everyone in a household old enough to take the class should.
Stop the Bleed. A national course, developed by the American College of Surgeons, that teaches how to recognize life-threatening bleeding and control it until help arrives. Serious bleeding is the injury where a trained bystander most clearly changes the outcome.
How to call for help well. Where you are, what happened, how many people, what you have done. Practicing this with children is not morbid; it is the reason they stay calm when it counts.
What to do when help is far away
- Call 911 first, or whatever emergency line serves your area, and do what the dispatcher says. When phone service is out, send someone for help and keep trying.
- Use the training you have, and only that. A person who has taken a first aid class knows both what to do and where their competence ends.
- Get the medication list out. It is the first thing a responder asks for and the last thing a frightened family can remember.
- Protect refrigerated medicines and powered equipment early, following what the pharmacist and supplier told you, before the situation is urgent.
- Write down what happened and when: symptoms, what was given, at what time. The person who arrives next will need it.
Who may need help
People who use insulin, oxygen, dialysis, or any medicine that must stay cold. Anyone who cannot manage their own medicines. Elders who live alone and might fall in the dark. Families with a medically fragile child. Neighbors who have no first aid kit and no one who has taken a class. A copy of this page and a knock on the door is a start; a neighborhood with a few trained people is a different place in an emergency.
What not to do
Do not give anyone else’s prescription to a person, or guess at a dose. Do not follow a treatment from a video or a forum in place of a course and a professional. Do not try skills you have not been trained in beyond the basics a dispatcher walks you through. Do not let a first aid kit sit unopened until the day it is needed. And do not let a person with a serious condition become the only one in the house who knows what they take.
Longer disruptions
When days become weeks, prescriptions run out and pharmacies may be closed or unable to reach a prescriber. The household answer is the reserve and the list, arranged in advance. The neighborhood answer is knowing which pharmacies are open, which clinics the county has set up, and who nearby is a nurse, a medic or a caregiver. That inventory of skills is what the Community pages are for.