Corporate First Aid Station Supply Checklist

A corporate first aid station is not a clinic. It is the wall-mounted cabinet or rolling cart near the break room, loading dock, or production floor that OSHA expects every workplace without a nearby infirmary or hospital to keep stocked with “adequate” supplies — enough to stop bleeding, treat a minor burn, flush an eye, and stabilize someone until EMS arrives, staffed by whichever trained employee is on shift, not a dedicated provider. That’s a different job from CASRAI’s Workplace Wellness Clinic Supply Checklist, which covers an employer-sponsored screening program run by a nurse or contracted provider as an ongoing service. This checklist is the baseline every general office or warehouse needs regardless of whether it also runs a wellness program on top — the minimum-compliance first-response station, not the staffed clinic.

Where to source this: LAC (lac.us), CASRAI’s sister medical-supply business, stocks the core categories below directly — First Aid Kits and AEDs & Defibrillators. Nothing here is a paid placement or a third-party affiliate link; it’s a real, first-party sourcing option under the same operator as CASRAI.

What a Corporate First Aid Station Is (and Isn’t)

“Corporate first aid station” covers the general office/warehouse case: a company with no on-site medical staff, relying on 29 CFR 1910.151(b) minimum-compliance stocking plus whatever trained first-aiders or CPR/AED-certified volunteers it has on shift. It sits at the base of a spectrum CASRAI’s other specialty-clinic checklists cover further up: a workplace wellness clinic adds a staffed screening program on top of this baseline; a fire station’s own first aid supply picture starts from the same workplace-station logic but is sized to firefighting-specific thermal, cardiac, and musculoskeletal injury risk that a general office or warehouse doesn’t carry; and an EMS crew’s jump bag is a different inventory altogether — response gear that leaves the building, not a fixed station. If your workplace is a general office, distribution center, warehouse, or light-manufacturing floor with no on-site medical staff, this is the right starting checklist.

The OSHA 1910.151(b) Baseline, and Where ANSI Z308.1 Fits

OSHA’s actual text is short and deliberately non-prescriptive. 29 CFR 1910.151(b) says: “Adequate first aid supplies shall be readily available.” It does not list contents, quantities, or a restocking schedule — that specificity is left to the employer to work out, the same pattern OSHA uses next door at 1910.151(c) for emergency eyewash and shower “suitable facilities,” where OSHA has not formally incorporated a consensus standard by reference but its own citation practice points compliance officers to the voluntary standard (ANSI/ISEA Z358.1 for eyewash) as the practical benchmark for what “suitable” means. By the same long-standing logic and widespread safety-professional practice, ANSI/ISEA Z308.1, Minimum Requirements for Workplace First Aid Kits and Supplies, is the standard most EHS teams and kit vendors actually use to size and fill a station that will hold up to an OSHA “adequate” determination — it is a voluntary consensus standard, not something OSHA has formally adopted wholesale, but treating a Z308.1-compliant kit as your practical compliance target is the standard industry approach. Because the standard itself is copyrighted, this guide describes its structure and categories rather than reproducing exact item counts — check the current edition or your kit vendor’s listing for line-item fill quantities.

Core First Aid Station Contents

Regardless of exact fill counts, a general office/warehouse station needs real coverage across a consistent set of categories, not just a box of adhesive bandages:

• Bleeding control — adhesive bandages in multiple sizes, sterile gauze pads and roller gauze, adhesive tape, at least one trauma/pressure dressing for a larger wound.
• Wound cleaning — antiseptic wipes or solution, saline for irrigation.
• Burn care — burn gel or burn dressings for minor thermal burns (a general office/warehouse station needs basic coverage here; a workplace with genuinely elevated burn exposure, like a commercial kitchen or the firefighting environment covered in CASRAI’s fire station checklist, needs a heavier allocation than this baseline).
• Eye care — single-use sterile eyewash or saline for minor irritants. Note this is distinct from a plumbed, ANSI Z358.1-compliant emergency eyewash/shower station required for workplaces handling corrosive or injurious materials under 1910.151(c) — that’s a separate fixture, not a station supply item, and out of scope for a general office.
• Instruments and PPE — tweezers, scissors, non-latex/nitrile exam gloves (multiple pairs), a CPR barrier/face shield.
• Cold response — instant cold packs for sprains and strains, which in an office/warehouse setting are typically the single most common injury type the station actually gets used for.
• Reference material — a basic first aid quick-reference card or guide, so an untrained employee isn’t the only responder before help arrives.

Matching Class A vs. Class B Fill to the Workplace

ANSI/ISEA Z308.1 organizes workplace first aid kits into two fill classes, and the distinction matters more than most first-time buyers assume. Class A is the base-level assortment built around the injury types and frequency typical of lower-hazard, lower-population environments — a standard office is the textbook Class A setting. Class B is a broader, higher-quantity assortment sized for higher-hazard or higher-population environments where more severe injury types (crush injuries, deeper lacerations, foreign-body exposure) and a larger workforce drawing on the same station are realistic — a warehouse floor, distribution center, or light-manufacturing operation typically calls for Class B, not Class A, even if the building also has office space attached. Buying a Class A kit for a warehouse because “it’s still a corporate office” is a common under-stocking mistake; the classification should follow the actual floor the station serves, not the org chart.

AED and Cardiac Emergency Readiness

Federal OSHA has no blanket general-industry standard requiring an AED on site — 1910.151 covers first aid supplies, not defibrillators specifically. Some state and local laws do require AEDs in specific occupancy types (certain assembly spaces, larger public and commercial buildings), so this is worth checking against your actual jurisdiction rather than assuming federal silence means no requirement applies anywhere. Independent of what’s legally required, sudden cardiac arrest response time is one of the few workplace emergencies where minutes decide the outcome, and a corporate first aid station program that stops at bandages and burn gel is leaving that gap uncovered. Where a workplace does stock an AED, it should sit in a clearly marked, centrally accessible location — not locked inside the same cabinet as bandages and gauze where a panicked responder has to dig for it — with enough CPR/AED-trained staff on each shift to actually use it.

Sizing, Placement, and Multiple Stations

Unlike the eyewash/shower provision at 1910.151(c), OSHA does not set a specific travel-distance or response-time figure for reaching a first aid kit the way ANSI Z358.1 does for eyewash stations — so there’s no single federally-mandated number to design around here. Standard EHS practice instead treats it as a coverage problem: a single-floor open office may genuinely need only one well-stocked station near the break room, while a multi-floor building, a warehouse with separated docks and mezzanines, or a facility with a genuinely higher-hazard zone (a workshop, a loading dock, a machine floor) needs a station on each floor or near each distinct hazard area, not one central cabinet the far end of the building has to walk five minutes to reach. Mark every station clearly, keep the path to it clear of obstruction, and make sure whoever’s actually working that area — not just whoever sits near the break room — knows where it is.

Inspection, Restocking, and Recordkeeping

ANSI Z308.1 calls for periodic inspection to confirm a station’s contents are complete and nothing has expired or been used without replacement; many employers standardize on a monthly visual check as a practical cadence, logged against a simple checklist so an inspection gap shows up before an empty station does. Burn dressings, ointments, and some wound-care items carry real expiration dates — treat a corporate first aid station the same way you’d treat any other safety equipment with a service life, not a set-and-forget cabinet. Keep a basic log of inspection dates and what was restocked; it costs almost nothing to maintain and is the difference between “we’re pretty sure it’s stocked” and being able to show it during an audit or after an incident.

What a Corporate First Aid Station Is Not

Three CASRAI guides cover adjacent territory that’s easy to conflate with this one, and getting the boundary right matters for budgeting correctly:

• It’s not a staffed workplace wellness clinic — that’s an ongoing screening/occupational-health program with dedicated staff, not a cabinet on the wall.
• It’s not sized like a fire station’s own first aid supply setup — firefighting crews carry a materially higher thermal, cardiac, and musculoskeletal injury profile than a general office or warehouse, and their station stock should reflect that; a general corporate baseline shouldn’t be over-built to match it, and a fire station shouldn’t be under-built to match a corporate one.
• It’s not an EMS jump bag — that inventory leaves the building on a rig and gets restocked call-by-call against a treatment protocol; a corporate station stays put and gets restocked on a calendar.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a first aid station legally required in every office?

29 CFR 1910.151(b) requires “adequate first aid supplies” to be “readily available” in any workplace without an infirmary, clinic, or hospital in near proximity used for treating injured employees — which covers the overwhelming majority of general offices and warehouses. It does not specify exact contents or a kit count; that’s where a consensus standard like ANSI Z308.1 becomes the practical way to demonstrate “adequate.”

What’s the difference between a first aid kit and a first aid station?

A kit is the portable container — a box or bag with the actual supplies. A station is the broader setup: the kit (or several), plus its fixed, marked, accessible location, restocking process, and often an AED and eyewash nearby. “Station” is the operational concept; “kit” is one component of it.

Does OSHA require a specific number of first aid kits per employee?

No. OSHA’s text sets no headcount-to-kit ratio. Employers typically work backward from ANSI Z308.1’s Class A/B population guidance and their own facility layout — floor count, hazard zones, travel distance — rather than a fixed per-employee formula, because none exists in the federal standard.

Do we need an AED even though OSHA doesn’t require one?

Federal OSHA doesn’t mandate it for general industry, but check state and local law before assuming nothing applies — some jurisdictions require AEDs in specific building/occupancy types. Independent of the legal floor, sudden cardiac arrest is a genuine minutes-matter emergency, which is why many employers stock one anyway alongside first aid supplies rather than treating it as a compliance-only decision.

How often should the station be restocked?

There’s no single federally mandated interval, but a periodic visual inspection — commonly monthly in practice — to check for expired, missing, or used-but-unreplaced items is standard EHS discipline, logged so gaps surface before the station is actually needed and found empty.