What Is the Best Way to Wrap a Wound?

Injuries happen every day. The best course of action with a wound is to dress it and, if it's serious enough, take the person to the hospital for treatment. However, a dressing is important even in this case, as the wound has to be protected during transportation. Knowing the best way to dress a wound can avoid infections or other serious health problems.

Clean the Wound

• Carefully inspect the injury before dressing the wound. If the wound is deep enough, there is a good chance that dirt may be under the skin. At this point, you will want to wash the wound. Carefully spray water on the wound and scrub any dirt away gently. Once you have washed the wound, apply some anti-bacterial substance to the skin. Hydrogen peroxide remains one of the most popular and effective anti-bacterial substances in use. It's cheap, and can be found anywhere. Always have some around. Antiseptic and antibacterial ointment is also appropriate.

Dress the Wound

• Take a pad and apply it to the wound. Make sure it covers the whole would, while having enough room to move around slightly. If you have no pads, paper towels or toilet paper can do. Make sure you don't touch the area that will be placed directly on the skin as this can cause infection. If more padding is needed, gauze or cotton balls can be placed around the area. If the wound is bleeding, make sure to apply a few pads so it doesn't bleed through.

  Take gauze and carefully wrap it around the padding. Start at the edge of the pad and wrap up the padding. Go a few inches past the end of the wrapping and re-wrap everything. Secure it so that it is firm, but not tight. If it is too tight, it can cut off circulation and cause further problems.
  If the padding is on an area that might move, wrap the padding with the area half bent. Wrap the full width of the wrap above and below area of movement.

  Once you have the area wrapped, apply a piece of tape or elastic wrap to adhere the wrap to it. Never attach tape to the skin. If the wrap needs to be removed or changed, take the tape off and slowly unwrap the gauze. Remove the pad, clean the skin if necessary, sterilize, dry, and repeat the process. Do this until your wound heals.

Other Tips

• If a wound is bleeding excessively (or is squirting blood) this is a serious injury and the injured person needs to get to a doctor immediately. Apply pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding. If pressure does not work, apply a tourniquet by tightly tying cloth or a band above the wound to stop the circulation. Use a tourniquet only in an emergency as leaving a tourniquet on too long can cause the flesh to die from lack of circulation.

  If there is something impaled in the wound, do not remove the object. Removing the object could cause more injury. Clean and dress the wound as described above and wrap bandages around the object to keep it from moving until you get to a doctor.