Cleaning a Wound: First Aid for Minor Injuries

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Tracey Cullers on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this segment, I’m going to show you how to cleanse a wound. It’s particularly difficult when you have a child and they are panicking at the time they get hurt. You see a wound that has so much dirt in it, you really want to cleanse it right away, that’s your natural instinct. But to drag a kid kicking and screaming over to a shower or over to the sink is difficult. So another way that you can do it is to fill up a basin with clean water and have them hold their arm over the top of the basin. Before you start to touch anything, get some gloves on. Hi! I’m Tracey Cullers on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this segment, we’re going to talk about how to cleanse a wound. In case of a child, this is the last thing that they want to do. Taking them kicking and screaming over to a sink or a shower can be difficult. An alternate way that you can do is to get a basin full of clean water. Just have them hold their hand gently over the top of the basin. Go ahead and put gloves on. You never want to touch bodily fluids without gloves if they are not your own. I recommend you keep a box of them handy. Then you hold their arm out over the top of the basin and just pour clean water over top. If you notice all the dirt doesn’t come off immediately, so take a clean washcloth and put a little bit of household soap on it. You’re going to clean the skin around the wound. That will make everyone feel better, to see it clean and less chance of dirt getting inside. The actual wound itself, you don’t want to put the soap on. That will only irritate the wound. So you rinse it. Before you bandage it, you want to just dry it off a little bit. Take a clean towel, dry around the skin, around the wound, and then take a sterile gauze pad and gently blot the wound. That’s the first step in taking care of a wound. "