Treating Poison Ivy & Oak Rash: First Aid for Minor Injuries

Video Transcript

"Hi! I am Tracey Cullers on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this segment, I’ll show you how to take care of poison ivy or poison oak. This case developed over several hours ago and now is blistering and sore. First, you want to put gloves on so that you do not get any oils on your hands and you do not spread it around. If the oils spread, they can get in onto your hands, your eyes and cause intense suffering. Put gloves on and then prepare to cleanse the area. There are products out there, that are cleansing towelettes you can carry around with you. These are specially designed for poison ivy, or poison oak. You go ahead and apply these to dry skin, rubbing them in for several minutes. You follow that with a cleansing of water and then you repeat the process. You really need to get those oils off of the area. If you don’t have this type of a product you can use a castle soap towelette or any type of cleansing towelette that has soap in it or use soap and water at a fountain. You can use these other types of products if you don’t have that. I would also recommend that you use Benadryl or some sort of antihistamine to reduce the swelling and the pain. Another type of ointment that you can use is calamine."