Vial or File of Life – a Great Gift Idea for Family or Employees
We are constantly looking for ways to engage our communities in “preparedness thinking.” It’s not always easy. For some reason, many people prefer to fall back on “It won’t happen to US!” as the reason they don’t do any planning.
However, everyone has seen an ambulance pull up to a home or business, lights blazing. Everyone stops for at least a moment to wonder what is happening inside.
We can use this fact to raise awareness in our neighborhoods or workplaces. Here’s a GIFT that you can arrange for that people will value – and that could make a difference between life and death.
The Gift: The Vial of Life
At a recent meeting with the Fire Department we were reminded that when First Responders are called to an emergency in a home, they automatically look for the victim’s VIAL OF LIFE.
What is the Vial of Life?
The Vial is really simply a container that holds essential medical information for the people in the house – information that First Responders will want to know if they have to give emergency treatment.
Originally, the info was put into an actual vial (like a medicine prescription bottle) but these days, the preferred container is a simple zip lock Baggie. You can see the plastic baggie in the image (blue stripe).
What goes into the Vial of Life Baggie?
The Baggie holds a filled-out Medical Information Form. It’s the form in the picture, with places for info such as:
Name of person in trouble
Name of Doctor
Medical conditions
Current medicines/prescriptions
Allergies
Contact information for family
Where do I put the Vial of Life Baggie?
Identify the Baggie by placing a decal with a red cross on the outside. Fold the Medical Information Form and place it inside.
Then fasten the baggie to the refrigerator door with tape or a magnet.
(Naturally, you’ll want to keep the Medical Information Form updated – that’s why it’s best to use a zip lock style baggie so you can take papers out and replace them.)
How does the Fire Department know I have this information on my refrigerator?
Depending on the layout of your home, place the second decal with a red cross on the front window or door to your house. This will let the Fire Department know you have a Vial of Life Baggie on the refrigerator.
Even without the second sticker, they will likely automatically look there for medical information.
Anything else I need to know?
Depending on your circumstances, you may want to put other information into the Baggie. For example . . .
If you have appointed someone else to make medical decisions for you in an emergency (common for senior citizens), you may want to include that info along with directions to where the full document can be found.
Your Advance Health Care Directive, which tells what emergency life-sustaining treatment you want, can also be included. (That form is available online and must be witnessed by your doctor.)
Finally, if you have specific end of life wishes, such as the desire to donate your body, you may want to include that info, too.
These documents are important.
Without the Vial of Life information, emergency personnel will follow their STANDARD PROCEDURE – which may NOT be what you want or can even survive.
How to Use the Gift with Your Group
If you want people to participate, you have to make it easy for them.
The “easiest” is to create Vial of Life kits, already assembled, and pass them out to all the members of your group. Each member of the family needs one!
2 Decals (print your own using color printer onto white labels), one for the Baggie and one for the door
Medical Information Form
If you prefer, turn this into a group activity. Provide sheets of decals, piles of forms and instructions and the baggies and have group members set up an assembly line to separate and assemble the kits. Next step is to distribute kits to neighbors, family members, etc. (You could add a pen as an extra incentive to get the form filled out!)
We distributed Vial of Life kits to our community about three years ago. Many of our neighbors, who don’t participate in any of our neighborhood emergency response team activities, still have their Baggies and point proudly to them.
The Vial of Life has been a successful and inexpensive awareness builder for our team. Add it to your own group’s agenda!
Virginia Your Emergency Plan Guide Team
If you are looking for other emergency response team ideas for group activities, please don’t overlook the book of CERT Meeting Ideas I put together earlier this year. You can get details here.
If you’ve been following this blog for the past several weeks you know that we’re big on coordinating Personal Survival Plans with Business Emergency Planning.
The reasoning is simple . . .
Businesses depend on their Employees and Employees depend on their Employers.
But it’s pretty well known that most small businesses don’t have adequate Emergency Response Plans. (Only around 67% have any plan at all.)
The future of your business?
Worse, statistics show that following a catastrophe, half of the businesses affected NEVER re-open their doors!
Why are businesses at such high risk?
Owner attitude.
First is the attitude of some owners that they’d rather just cope with an emergency when it hits rather than make any plans to prevent or mitigate it. (We have to ask, if this is you or your boss, are you really a business person?)
Emotional impact.
A second factor to business survival is that a major emergency has a dual emotional impact on employees.
Beyond their direct experience at the workplace, with damage and possible injuries, is the safety of their family members who may have been affected, too – but are spread out in the community somewhere.
Since communications are likely to be disrupted, employees will want to leave the workplace immediately to check on their loved ones. Once they disappear, the business has little chance of maintaining critical functions.
Improve the odds: integrate personal emergency planning with business survival planning.
Anything the business principals can do to facilitate employees’ family and neighborhood emergency planning will work to the benefit of all concerned.
One way to begin is by making sure that all employees have adequate Personal Family Survival Plans. This includes:
Personally-tailored survival kits at home
Kits at work and/or in their cars
Communication Plans for family members.
Take advantage of holiday timing.
Now might be a way to kick-start this by seizing on the holiday spirit.
Since we do not advocate buying pre-made, one-size-fits-all, survival kits — which typically include a lot of useless (or low quality) items – we strongly recommend that you consider getting them started with an empty backpack like this one from Amazon. It is big enough, but not too big, and has the advantage of opening from the top to give easy access to everything inside. And if your company gift policy limits employee gifts to a maximum of $25, you’re in luck! (Click on the image to get full details, price, etc. Different colors have different prices.)
As a gift, the survival kit meets important criteria.
It’s meaningful.
Every step that an employer can take to help employees prepare their own personal disaster plan will be meaningful for both.
It’s personal.
Some people really like clothing with logos, or parties, but others don’t appreciate those gifts at all! Candy? Cheese? Wine? These all depend on people’s personal tastes.
The survival kit is a backpack waiting to be filled with items that the employee chooses!
How to add value to this gift.
The business can use the survival kit to kick-start a more in-depth discussion of preparedness. Setting up an emergency supplies fair at lunch or after work, for example, can improve the odds of employees actually building their kits.
The business can do even more by adding an item to go into the kit – for example, a flashlight or solar-powered or hand-crank radio. Here’s a link to our updated list of the top 10 survival kit items.
And an additional benefit. . .
If your business is one of the 37% of businesses without any business continuation plan at all, this whole campaign could be the impetus to get a company plan started!
And if you want to talk over some ideas of how best to present the backpacks to your employees, or how to speak to your employer about providing them to the workforce — just give us a call. We have a lot of good experience with “employee gifts” that we will be happy to share!
Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team
P.S. I mean that about the call!
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