How to Splint Injured Toes

While they seem somewhat superfluous, you never really notice how much you use your toes in walking, until you injure one of them. Injuring a toe is very easy to do: stubbing against something solid, dropping something on them, tripping and landing on it. Fortunately, splinting them after an injury is also very easy to do on yourself or someone else.

Things You'll Need

• Gauze
• 1/2-inch medical tape
• Toilet paper or cardboard (optional)
• Duct or masking tape (optional)

Show More

Instructions

Splinting the Toe

• 1

  Determine the extent of the injury. Clean out any open wounds, sterilize them as necessary to combat infection. You may need to pull and squeeze the toe a little to determine which toes are injured and where the injury is. Feel for any broken bones, and ask the patient if they heard anything break at the time of injury.

• 2

  Fold the gauze to fit between the injured toe and the largest neighboring toe. The gauze provides padding that will prevent chafing or further injury.

• 3

  Tape the toes together around the padding. Start the strip on the non-injured toe and wrap the medical tape around both toes. If necessary, extend up the foot.

• 4

  Trim the tape to length.

• 5

  Tell the patient to rest their foot, walking on it only when necessary. The splinting should reduce some of the pain, but it will still hurt to walk on for a few days. Generally, the toe should heal within a week. Provide the patient with a week's worth of extra tape and gauze, in case they need to remove and re-wrap the injury.

• 6

  Remove the bandage after a week. Cut the tape apart between the toes and unwrap them.