Hi, your child has just come in and they're crying because they've got a cut or they fell off their bike and scraped their knee. What do you do next? The first thing to do would be to calm your child down. You might want to give them a glass of water or something to help them relax a little bit and feel better. The next thing of course is to make sure that the cut isn't bleeding too much, and you want to make sure it's clean. So, the first thing you could do then is to place the cut under stream of running water if at all possible. If it's inconvenient or unable to do that, you can take a clean cloth and just get it wet and gently wipe off the cut. You want to make sure it's clean and there isn't any debris left in there. You then want to make sure that you're able to stop any bleeding if it's still bleeding, and you do that by applying pressure. You just put that rag back on there and hold it tight until the bleeding goes away. After that you're ready to bandage the cut. You could pick a band-aid that is about the right size for the cut. If it's little, you can use a little one. If it's bigger, you might need something more. That begs the question of when do you need to go to the doctor for a cut. If the cut is deep, if it's more than, say, an eighth of an inch deep, if it's more than an inch long, if it looks like it needs stitches, certainly you need to go to the doctor. If it's a very dirty cut and you think that, um, they've uh, well your child has probably had a recent tetanus shot, but if there's some doubt about that, that would be another reason to go to the doctor. If they've taken a gouge out of their skin, that's more than, say, the size of a dime, you might want to see a doctor to make sure it's clean and the edges are going to heal good. But then what you want to do to treat it is just to cover it with a bandage, keep it clean and dry. You want to change the bandage once a day. You can put a little antibiotic cream as long as your child isn't allergic. And particularly on a scrape, the cream is helpful. And if the child gets the bandage wet, you want to change it so that it doesn't grow bacteria, the bacteria underneath cannot grow. Again, my name is Beverly Bitterman, ARNP, Health and Wellness Consultant, and I hope that your child's cut heals sooner rather than later.
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