Sometimes, even in an emergency where someone is bleeding and you can't find a bandage anywhere, and your clothes aren't the best option for several reasons, you scavenge over your purse for an ideal absorbent equivalent, and find, a pack of menstrual pads. The recipient would either be squicked about it or make an effort to shrug it off, as you continue to search for a strip of fabric for a sling.
In a sense, any item that could be used as bandages like tissue paper, sticks to make splints, oars for crutches, or tampons for nosebleeds, or cold beverages for burns and booze for antiseptics could also work as a temporary first aid before you call for emergency services. Worst Aid can occur if the one treating has no experience or if the quality of the bandage isn't up to par.
A Super-Trope of From Dress to Dressing, There Will Be Toilet Paper, and Beef Bandage. Not to be confused with Instant Bandages. If it's an impressive DIY contraption, it may overlap with MacGyvering.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Attack on Titan: During the siege on Castle Utgard, Reiner breaks his arm, and Historia rips her skirt to use as a makeshift splint.
Fan Works
- The Palaververse: Treasures: When Daring sees her father after he's been led to her, he's sporting an improvised tourniquet, a.k.a a type of bandage, crafted from the jacket he was seen wearing last, his wounds coming from the fact that they're both in a dangerous magical ruin:
He was panting and ragged, his tricorn loosely on his head and his jacket slashed to ribbons wherever it had met the glaive. Part of it had been ripped off and wrapped as a tourniquet around his wounded leg, the indigo there given a dark purple hue by his blood.
Films — Live-Action
- Better Watch Out: Ashley survived the cut on her neck, caused by Luke, by sticking it to a piece of duct tape from her mouth.
- The 1971 biopic Evel Knievel features a scene where the title character slaps one of his girlfriend's sanitary pads over a bleeding wound.
- El Gringo has The Man being treated by his new Love Interest, Anna, after being shot in a shootout in a shady motel without any medical supplies at hand. Anna improvises a bandage using her bra and panties, leading to the Man exclaiming "It's almost worth getting shot!"
- The 1990s Filipino film Ikaw Lang (Only You), starring Vilma Santos, has her character bandage her male companion with menstrual pads after being on the run with the cops, and the dude naturally got squicked out.
- In Jupiter Ascending, Jupiter uses a pad from the glove compartment of a stolen car to staunch Caine's bleeding.
- Romancing the Stone After his hand is bitten off by a crocodile, Zolo uses his ascot to stop the blood flow.
- Towards the end of Short Circuit 2, Johnny is "bleeding" battery acid after nearly being beaten to death by some thugs after they've tricked him into helping their robbery. Fred Ritter (who'd previously tried to sell Johnny to a company) finds him and sacrifices his prized silk shirt to staunch it.
- Steel Rain. There's an Assassination Attempt on the ruler of North Korea as he's attending the opening of a Chinese-built toy factory. Two factory workers and a loyal security agent load their Glorious Leader into the back of a van filled with panda plushies and race off before the rebel troops can move in to finish the job. As he's bleeding out, they use a plushie to staunch his wound.
Literature
- The Last Kids On Earth: In June's Day in the Limelight book, she encounters an injured winged wretch. Unable to find any bandages, she raids a nearby abandoned ice cream truck and then bandages its wounds with napkins and melted sprinkles.
- In the second book of Millennium Series, Blomkvist uses duct tape as an improvised bandage on Salander; the doctor who treats Salander is impressed by both its effectiveness and Blomkvist's quick thinking.
- In Warrior Cats, the Clans — being feral cats and without access to modern medicine — use cobwebs as bandages, which was inspired by the real-life historical use of spiderwebs in wound treatment. In Tigerclaw's Fury, when Tigerclaw is unable to find the usual cobwebs to bandage his wounds, he has to look for anything in the forest that will work to staunch the bleeding: first, he searches for moss and ultimately settles for leaf mulch.
Live-Action TV
- Better Call Saul: When Mike arrives in Albuquerque, he stops by an empty ladies' restroom in the train station and obtains a maxi pad, using it to stanch a bullet wound in his shoulder.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: spoofed by Frank, who occasionally thinks he can fix various wounds by packing them with garbage (including his broken nose and cuts from his toe knife). It never works and usually makes things worse for obvious reasons.
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024): John uses a scarf (and later some napkins) to keep his neck from bleeding too much while he and Jane chase after a target.
- In Orphan Black, Sarah uses a tampon to staunch the wound after she is stabbed in the leg by Rachel, using a string to tie it for greater pressure.
- Star Trek: The Original Series: A mysterious alien creature has been menacing some Federation miners, and Captain Kirk and First Officer Spock investigate. When they encounter the creature, it ignores warnings to stay back, so they fire phasers at it. The creature is wounded and retreats. Later, the pair discover the creature is intelligent and menaced the miners to protect its eggs. A silicone-based spackling compound is used to patch the creature's wound, and its hatchlings start digging tunnels faster than the miners ever could.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In the pilot episode, Dr. Bashir gets Odo to clamp a wound with his hand which, as he's a shapeshifter, is more effective than usual for this trope.
Video Games
- In Ultima VII, cloth can be cut into bandages using shears, which can provide some healing for injured members of the player's party.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition: Discussed in background chatter in Haven. An older nun tells her younger companion that if they run out of bandages just start tearing up shirts, because if the Inquisition can afford fancy new uniforms then they can afford bandages.
Western Animation
- Hey Arnold!: In "Veteran's Day", Gerald's father tells of the time he served in the Vietnam War, not as a soldier, but as an office worker. One day, while driving across an abandoned battlefield, he saw a wounded soldier lying on the ground and, not having any medical tools on hand, used some papers from his briefcase to patch his wounds until paramedics could find him. Later, they end up meeting that very soldier, who credits Martin with saving his life.
Real Life
- Worth noting that this is a reversal of their invention — modern menstrual pads are based on a type of disposable bandage invented somewhere around the early 1800s that nurses commandeered as a convenient option.
- A common myth is that tampons were originally invented for the purpose of plugging bullet holes or stab wounds, but this is false. The modern-day tampon was invented for exactly what its intended purpose is (as in, absorbing period blood), and though they are sometimes used to stop bleeding in an emergency, they're not ideal for this purpose and this shouldn't be attempted, if possible. This is because rather than actually putting any pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding, tampons simply absorb the blood. Additionally, doing this can potentially lead to infections, or can even further injure the person if there's still an object (e.g. a bullet or knife) in the wound.
- A PSA about school shootings from Sandy Hook Promise begins like a back-to-school retail commercial in which kids show off their new school supplies, then are forced to use them to protect themselves from an active shooter. One student has to use his brand new socks to bandage his friend's bloody leg.
