another medical tip ..

Okay i know that some of you know this but alot of you may not so i'm going to start adding tid bits that i have picked up from nursing school. I try to also put something that i found on the internet about what i'm talking about to reference.. anyway below is something that i learned in nursing school that i had no idea about really till then. I took the following paragraphs from another posting site. Our instructors had told us the same thing and i was thinking about this last night when i was cleaning a cut and had no alcohol in the whole house.. hope it helps someone.

I know when we were all children and you cut yourself of you scraped you knee, your mom would reach of one of two things. Alcohol, which we all hated because it burned so much, or she would get Hydrogen Peroxide, which didn't hurt all that much and it bubbled, which it the coolest thing in the world when you are 6 years old. Well parents, no longer reach for the Hydrogen Peroxide. And here is why i say this.... I am in nursing school and 4 weeks ago i did a rotation with a Wound Care nurse. If a patient has a big sore or a big wound she is a specialized nurse who does wound care. I noticed throughout the week that she never used any Hydrogen peroxide on any wounds. She said not only does it bubble and eat away and the bad bacteria in the wound, it is also eating away and bubbling away good tissue! This means you are actually doing more harm that good. Because the more of the good tissue that is eaten away, the longer the sore or cut takes to heal. Because it takes longer to heal, there is an increased risk for infection because it is open for a longer amount of time. She told me she never uses it because the patients in the hospital are already at risk for infection and she does'nt want anything to slow down wound healing. It is more beneficial to clean cut or scrape with Normal saline(you can get it any any drug store). Normal saline is almost the same as diluted salt water, but normal saline is sterile and salt water is not. As soon as the cut or scrape occurs, clean it with normal saline. Get two 4x4 gauze and apply a triple antibiotic ointment to the gauze side that will be touching the skin. Spread it around evenly. Apply both 4x4's to the wound and secure with tape by taping all edges like a window pane and the securing with look horizontal strips of tape. You don't want use the first little bit of the ointment that comes out of the tube, because it might be contaminated. You also don't want to squeeze the ointment directly from the tube onto the skin, because the tube could touch the wound making it more dirty. The dressing should be changed once a day and it is probably best to change it during bath time because your going to have to take the old bandage off anyway. Never use the same only gauze two days in a row. The wound care nurse also said, if you don't have any Normal Saline and all you have is hydrogen peroxide, dilute the peroxide. It should be about 3/4 water and may 1/4 peroxide. I will still eat away at the good and bad stuff, but it will not eat away as much and it would take alot longer than if you just poured it straight from the bottle.