Wound Week

With the focus on everyone’s mind at the moment being on vaccinations it can be easy to forget how many patients come through our nursing department every week and month for other procedures. One of these is wound care. We treat different types of wounds, acute and chronic, and the nursing team stay up to date with current best practice in this field by attending regular training courses, conferences and zoom teaching sessions.

Some of the wounds that we treat regularly in our nursing department are

• Cuts and abrasions
• Burns
• Ulcers
• Post-surgical wounds
• Skin tears

One of the most common wounds that can have a significant impact on our patient is a skin tear wound. These wounds happen accidentally often at home or while out and about in the community. It often affects the lower limbs and can be a knock from a car door, a bump from a shopping trolley or a skin tear sustained when falling over and scraping off a patch of skin. If not treated properly these wounds can become infected and break down leading to ulcers that then take many months to heal.

The golden rule for skin tears is to get them treated quickly and never to cut off any loose excess skin no matter how tempting! If a skin tear wound is seen by our nurses quickly then we are often able to pull the skin back into place which helps to reduce the amount of time that the wound will take to heal.

Written by
Corrie Dommersen
CHMC Nurse