The kit everyone has and nobody checks
Sitting in a closet since last year
Most households own a first-aid kit. It sits in a hall closet, a bathroom cabinet, or the trunk of a car, bought sometime in the last few years with good intentions and not much follow-through. Open one that has been sitting for two years and you will find adhesive bandages whose adhesive no longer sticks, antiseptic wipe packets that have dried out through the foil, and pain relievers that expired months ago.
A kit in that condition is not a medical resource. It is furniture. The household that reaches for it during a cut, a burn, or a sprained ankle discovers the gap at the worst possible moment, when there is no time to drive to a store and no patience to sort through packets looking for something that still works.
Maintenance, not purchase
The difference between a first-aid kit that works and one that does not is not the brand or the price. It is whether someone in the household has opened it in the last six months, checked what is missing, and replaced what has expired. A twenty-dollar kit from a drugstore, restocked twice a year, outperforms an eighty-dollar kit that has never been opened since the shrink-wrap came off.
This is the pattern that runs through every supply in the household: the thing you maintain is the thing you can use. The thing you bought and forgot is not inventory. It is clutter with a medical cross printed on the case. The audit is straightforward: compare what is in the kit against a standard recommended-contents list, and record what is missing or expired.
A first-aid kit is a maintenance commitment, not a purchase. The household that checks it twice a year has a kit. The household that bought one three years ago has a box.
CPR is not something you read about
The other half of first-aid readiness is training, and this is where a reading page reaches its limit. CPR and AED use are physical skills that require hands-on practice with a mannequin and feedback from a certified trainer. No amount of reading replaces the muscle memory of chest compressions at the right depth and rate, or the experience of hearing an AED's voice prompts while your hands are shaking.
What matters in this module is knowing the status. Where is your kit? When did you last check it? What needs replacing? Does anyone in your household have current CPR certification, and if so, when does it expire? If the answer to the last question is no, that goes on the action list you build at the end of this course. The reading below covers kit contents, maintenance schedules, and where to find hands-on CPR training.
The reading for this module
This is the core reading for the module. Take it with your earlier work beside you.
Audit your first-aid kit.
Audit your first-aid kit against the MedlinePlus recommended contents. Record its location, when it was last checked, anything missing or expired, and the CPR training status of every adult in the household.