Very small belt-mounted Immediate Trauma Kit?

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Background:

As some of you have noticed, I’m based in England (the UK), I have a reasonable pack-mounted trauma kit that I carry when at work, and in the back of my car.

However, I also work with three other guys in a voluntary team to do with mid-to-large-size public events, where my current TFAK is going to be at least five, often more, minutes away by foot (you can’t carry a backpack at many of these events, and we’re supposed to be reasonably low-key), so I and the rest of my team are looking for a TFAK of small essential items only, with a low training requirement (for them, that is, as I’ve had the training already!).

These TFAK elements will be mounted in as small a belt-carried pouch as possible, since the kit we already carry takes up a bit of space on our belts under our blazers already – other standard belt kit includes defensive spray, torch (flashlight), two-way radio, handcuffs, and search gloves; this doesn’t include what we have to carry in the blazers, such as notebook, pen, seat belt cutter/glass breaker, etc.

So, I think I’ve got the listing nailed down:

• Standard small first field dressing (FFD) (NOT Israeli pattern)
• Vented Chest Seal pack (pair of seals per pack)
• SOFTT tourniquet
• Triangular Bandage

Rationalisations:

The belt-mounted STK (Small Trauma Kit) will be an interim solution to help until a more comprehensive set of kit is available, or until professional medical help arrives on-scene. The idea is to preserve life, not fix it, in the interim.

• The basic First Field Dressing is not going to be the new form of Israeli combat dressing; this is your old fashioned ‘absorbent pad on a ribbon’ kind of thing, much like the British FFD of old, or the old style US “dressing, first aid, field, camouflaged”. New commercial version of this exist, so that’s an easy add.
• The Vented chest seals are available, but most are fairly big – the smaller the better is the key here, so ideas on this would be welcome.
• The SOFTT tourniquet is small, easily deployed, and available (I’ve got on myself), so that’s what we’ll look at here.
• The triangular bandage is for the more common public event injury – broken bones, sprains, and dislocations, where immobilising the affected limb is the key, until the casualty can be moved to a more suitable treatment location.

A pouch for this should be no more than five or six inches long, two to three inches tall, and absolutely no deeper than one and a half inches when packed (low profile, remember?).

Problem:

There does not appear to be a cheap (the other guys are also volunteers, remember, and don’t have a lot of money to throw at something like this) pre-made STK of the nature described above, which I find rather surprising. So, acquiring the components four of these kits is not that much of a problem; what IS a problem is the pouch. It has to be small, easily removed from the belt to allow for deployment, and able to maintain retention ON the belt when not needed.

Any ideas?

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