Minor Illness and Home Medicine Chest
Helping yourself: the home medicine chest – what should I keep at home?
It makes sense to keep a few medicines locked away (out of the reach of children) for the management of minor illnesses and minor injuries. Here is a suggested list of the kind of things you could keep at home:
- Selection of plasters in assorted sizes
- 1 triangular bandage
- Sterile dressings in assorted sizes
- Tweezers for removing splinters
- Thermometer for fevers
- Calamine lotion for dabbing onto insect bites, stings and sunburn
- Antiseptic cream to treat sores, spots and grazes
- Vapour rub for steam inhalation, or to rub on the chest and nose of a child with a stuffy nose or dry cough
- Paracetamol syrups to relieve pain or fever in young children
- Soluble aspirin/paracetamol/ibuprofen tablets which are good for headaches, colds, sore throats and painful bruises
- Strepsils, Dequacaine or other throat lozenges
- 5cm wide crepe bandage to keep dressings in place or support sprains
- Indigestion remedy e.g. milk of magnesia or Gaviscon
- Mild laxative e.g. Senokot
- Oral rehydration solution e.g. Dioralyte