How to Treat a wound

Ouch! You or your child hurt yourself and now there is blood and skin and someone is about to swoon. This is not the time to panic. Slow down, take a few deep breaths to calm yourself and prepare to treat the wound. This article assumes a relatively minor wound, cut or scrape.

Things You'll Need

• Clean water
• Bandages
• Antibacterial ointment or cream

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Instructions

• 1

  Stop the bleeding. Apply pressure directly over the wound site to stop bleeding. Don’t peek to see how you’re doing. If it doesn’t stop, you’ll know. If this is a large, deep wound and direct pressure isn’t working, put pressure on a major pressure point in the crease of the leg or the underarm to slow blood flow and get medical help immediately.

• 2

  Clean the wound. Clean water works just fine; run it from the tap, pour it from your water bottle. Pick bits of junk out of the wound with sterile tweezers. You can gently clean the area surrounding the wound with soap and water.

• 3

  Apply antibacterial ointment to the wound to help prevent infection. You don’t need to use burning stuff like rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide to get a good result.

• 4

  Cover the wound with a bandage of some sort to keep it clean. A bandage may also help to hold the edges of the wound together. Put a fresh bandage on the wound as needed, but at least every day until it heals.