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A generic first aid kit is built to handle the injuries most workplaces see every week — cuts, sprains, burns, splinters. Life-threatening hemorrhage is a different problem: it requires a different set of tools, applied correctly within minutes, by whoever happens to be nearest when it happens. This guide is for the person responsible for actually stocking that response capability, whether that’s a hospital or EMS procurement team standardizing kits across a facility network, a clinic manager filling one wall station, or an individual putting together a kit for home or a vehicle. It covers what belongs in a hemorrhage control kit, how to size and place a stocking program, the compliance landmarks worth knowing, and how this equipment fits into broader active-threat preparedness planning.
Why Hemorrhage Control Is Now Its Own Kit Category
Uncontrolled bleeding is widely recognized in trauma and emergency medicine as a leading cause of preventable death after injury — a problem of minutes, not hours, and one that first responders often cannot reach in time. That recognition, drawn largely from battlefield casualty care, is what separated hemorrhage control from generic first aid as its own discipline. Techniques standardized by the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care (CoTCCC) for military use — direct pressure, wound packing with hemostatic agents, and tourniquet application — were adapted for civilian settings through the Hartford Consensus, a joint effort convened after mass-casualty events involving the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and federal partners. That work became Stop the Bleed, the national public-awareness and training campaign the ACS operates under a licensing agreement with the Department of Defense, aimed at turning bystanders into first responders for severe bleeding before EMS arrives.
The practical consequence for procurement is that a hemorrhage control kit is not an upsized first aid kit. A standard workplace first aid kit is built around the ANSI/ISEA Z308.1 minimum-supply standard for treating minor injuries — bandages, antiseptic, burn care. Federal OSHA’s general industry standard, 29 CFR 1910.151, requires only that “adequate first aid supplies shall be readily available” and that someone be trained to render first aid where a medical facility isn’t nearby — it does not itemize contents, which is why ANSI Z308.1 exists as the voluntary consensus benchmark most compliance programs point to for what “adequate” means. Z308.1 kits are not built or tested around massive hemorrhage; they typically contain none of the items a Stop-the-Bleed-aligned response actually needs. Increasingly, a facility’s hazard assessment treats a hemorrhage control kit as its own line item, stocked alongside — not instead of — a Z308.1-compliant first aid kit.
What a Hemorrhage Control Kit Needs to Contain
A Stop-the-Bleed-aligned kit is built around a small number of items, each doing a specific job. Quantity and case-pack size differ by buyer (a single home kit vs. a multi-site hospital stocking program), but the core contents are consistent.
| Item | Purpose | Selection notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tourniquet | Stops arterial bleeding in an extremity when direct pressure alone isn’t controlling it | Windlass-style, one-handed application (the wearer may be applying it to themselves); CAT (Combat Application Tourniquet) and SOF-T Wide are the two most commonly stocked CoTCCC-referenced designs. Check strap and windlass integrity on a schedule — the elastic/mechanical components degrade with age and heat exposure even unused. |
| Hemostatic gauze | Packed directly into a wound to accelerate clotting where a tourniquet can’t be applied (torso, neck, groin/junctional wounds) | Kaolin- or chitosan-impregnated rolled gauze is the common civilian format. Confirm the manufacturer’s stated shelf life on the package and build it into a kit rotation schedule — don’t assume an indefinite shelf life. |
| Pressure/compression dressing | Maintains direct pressure on a wound after packing, freeing up the responder’s hands | An “Israeli bandage”-style elastic wrap with an integrated pressure bar is the standard civilian equivalent; stock more than one size if the kit serves adults and adolescents/children. |
| Trauma shears | Exposes the wound quickly by cutting through clothing | Blunt-tip, high-leverage shears — not standard scissors. |
| Gloves and eye protection | Universal-precautions barrier for the responder | Nitrile exam gloves in more than one size; this is also where a kit intersects directly with a facility’s bloodborne pathogens exposure control plan (see below). |
| Permanent marker | Records tourniquet application time on the device or the patient’s skin/forehead — critical information for the next responder | A small, easy-to-overlook item that Stop the Bleed training specifically calls out. |
| Kit housing | Keeps contents together, visible, and fast to open under stress | Wall-mounted cabinets (often placed near AEDs) for fixed facility locations; a compact zippered pouch (individual first aid kit, “IFAK” format) for vehicle, EDC, or home use. |
| Emergency/space blanket | Manages hypothermia risk, which compounds blood loss and shock | Not always included in minimal kits, but a low-cost addition that’s part of the broader “hypothermia” step in the standard hemorrhage-response sequence (massive bleeding, airway, respiration, circulation, hypothermia) taught in Stop the Bleed and TCCC-derived courses. |
Sizing the Program: How Many Kits, Where, and Who’s Buying
The buying decision splits along two fairly different paths.
Facility procurement (hospitals, clinics, EMS, large employers)
Most facility programs use the same placement logic already applied to AEDs: a kit should be reachable within a short walk from anywhere in the building, not centralized in one supply closet. Many safety programs adopt roughly the same reachability window commonly used for AED placement (on the order of a few minutes) as a planning heuristic for bleeding-control stations too, though neither OSHA nor ANSI mandates a specific number of kits or a fixed placement distance — that determination is left to the facility’s own hazard assessment, the same way 1910.151’s “adequate supplies” language is. Procurement considerations at volume: standardizing on a single kit SKU across sites simplifies restocking and training (staff who train on one configuration shouldn’t have to relearn a different layout at another site); case-pack purchasing and a documented expiration-tracking/rotation process matter more at scale, since a wall of kits with staggered expiration dates is harder to manage than a single facility kit; and restock-after-use logging ties into the same recordkeeping expectations that already apply to a facility’s other emergency-response equipment (AEDs, eyewash stations) for accreditation surveys.
Individual/home buyers
A single compact kit covers the common use cases: one for the home (kept somewhere accessible, not buried in a closet), one for a vehicle, and increasingly a small EDC (everyday-carry) pouch. The core contents don’t change — tourniquet, hemostatic gauze, compression dressing, gloves, shears — just the packaging and quantity. The main selection question for an individual buyer is usually the same one facility buyers ask about the tourniquet specifically: is it a design taught in the Stop the Bleed course the buyer or a family member has actually taken, since unfamiliar hardware under stress is a real usability problem regardless of how good the device is on paper.
Standards and Compliance Landmarks
- OSHA 29 CFR 1910.151 — the federal general-industry requirement for “adequate first aid supplies” and trained personnel; it does not specify hemorrhage-control contents by name.
- ANSI/ISEA Z308.1 — the voluntary consensus standard for minimum workplace first aid kit contents (Class A and Class B, differentiated by workplace hazard level and expected usage volume). It governs general first aid kits, not hemorrhage-control kits specifically — treat a Stop-the-Bleed-aligned kit as a supplement to a Z308.1-compliant kit, not a replacement for one.
- Stop the Bleed / the Hartford Consensus — the ACS-run national training and awareness campaign (operated under a Department of Defense licensing agreement) that established the civilian bleeding-control curriculum and popularized the “bleeding control station” concept many facilities now build their kit programs around.
- Device classification — tourniquets sold for hemorrhage control in the US are generally regulated by the FDA as medical devices; buyers standardizing a facility program should confirm a given product’s marketing status with the manufacturer rather than assume equivalence between consumer-marketed and clinically-marketed versions.
Mapping Hemorrhage Control to Active-Threat Preparedness
Hemorrhage control planning doesn’t sit in isolation from a facility’s broader emergency-preparedness program — it’s one operational piece of it. Active-threat events (workplace violence, mass-casualty incidents) are exactly the scenario Stop the Bleed was built around, and a facility’s workplace violence prevention program should reference where bleeding-control stations are located and who’s trained to use them, the same way it references where security response converges. See CASRAI’s guide to workplace violence prevention in healthcare for the OSHA General Duty Clause and Joint Commission program elements this kit program should sit inside, rather than stand apart from.
Two more compliance threads intersect directly with kit contents and use: gloves and other barrier items in the kit are governed by the same universal-precautions logic as the rest of a facility’s bloodborne pathogens program — see the exposure control plan for bloodborne pathogens guide for the written-plan requirements under 29 CFR 1910.1030(c) — and any facility conducting a PPE hazard assessment for its broader safety program should explicitly evaluate hemorrhage-response tasks as part of that documented process; see PPE hazard assessment: the written certification OSHA requires.
Training and Maintenance: The Kit Is Only as Good as the Program Around It
A wall-mounted kit nobody has trained on is a liability, not a safeguard. Stop the Bleed courses (widely available through ACS-affiliated instructors and many hospital trauma programs) are the standard training path, and facilities that already run recurring AED/CPR recertification cycles typically fold bleeding-control training into the same cadence rather than treating it as a separate program. On the equipment side: check kits on a fixed schedule for expired hemostatic gauze, confirm tourniquet strap and windlass integrity, and replace any kit — fully, not partially — immediately after real-world use rather than restocking piecemeal from open stock. Documenting these checks is the same kind of recordkeeping an accreditation survey already expects for other emergency equipment on the unit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between a first aid kit and a hemorrhage control kit?
A first aid kit (typically built to the ANSI/ISEA Z308.1 standard) is designed for minor injuries — cuts, burns, sprains. A hemorrhage control kit is designed for one specific, immediately life-threatening problem: severe bleeding that direct pressure alone won’t stop. The two are complementary, not interchangeable — most facility programs stock both.
Does OSHA require a hemorrhage control kit specifically?
No federal OSHA standard names hemorrhage control kits by content. 29 CFR 1910.151 requires “adequate first aid supplies,” and what counts as adequate is determined by the facility’s own hazard assessment — for many workplaces, especially those with active-threat exposure or high-energy trauma risk, that assessment increasingly includes a dedicated bleeding-control kit alongside a standard first aid kit.
How many kits does a facility need, and where should they go?
There’s no fixed federal or ANSI number. Most programs use the same reachability logic already applied to AED placement — spread across a building so a kit is a short walk away from any point, not centralized — determined by the facility’s own layout and hazard assessment.
Do tourniquets and hemostatic gauze expire?
Hemostatic gauze has a manufacturer-stated shelf life and needs rotation. Tourniquets don’t typically carry a hard expiration date the way gauze does, but the elastic strap and windlass hardware degrade with age and heat/UV exposure, so kits should be inspected on a schedule rather than assumed to be good indefinitely.
How does a hemorrhage control kit fit into active-threat preparedness planning?
It’s the equipment layer of a broader plan that also includes training, placement, and response protocol — the same relationship a fire extinguisher has to a fire-safety program. A kit without trained staff who know its location isn’t a functioning bleeding-control station.
Sourcing note
CASRAI’s sister medical-supply operation, LAC (lac.us), carries the categories referenced throughout this guide and is a reasonable place to compare specific products against the selection criteria above:
- Emergency, Trauma & Crisis Response — the broader category covering trauma response supplies for facility and kit stocking.
- Hemorrhage Control — tourniquets, hemostatic gauze, and compression dressings, the core items this guide covers.
- Emergency Blankets — the hypothermia-management addition noted above.
