Wound Care Made Incredibly Easy

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Skin tears

Handle with care

Health care providers and others who must wash their hands frequently also may experience painful fissures in fingertips and hands. Try your own experi ment! Tonight at bedtime, apply your favorite lotion to one hand and apply an ointment (dimethicone or petrolatum based) to the other hand. Put a glove on each hand. In the morning, check to see how soft your hands are and how the cracks in your fingertips have responded. Usually, the ointment heals them faster! Try it on your heels with socks too!

Keys to protecting skin from friction damage include preventing or treating xerosis and pre venting overhydration. One method to reduce skin tears and abrasions is to cover any high-risk areas. Skin prone to dryness on the lower legs can be protected with pant legs or knee-high socks; don’t forget to keep the long socks on the patient during transfers, especially while in a wheelchair. Skin tears on the shins can even oc cur during a short trip for a bath! Forearms are also especially vulnerable to abrasions and skin tears and can be protected with long sleeves or separate sleeves meant for this protection. A trial of protective socks made with Kevlar fibers (used in stab-proof vests and motorcycle

Goldschmidt, W. M., & Carter, P. J. (2009). Lippincott’s textbook for long-term care nursing assistants: A humanistic approach to caregiving . Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

protective clothing) showed these products can decrease skin tears in lower extremities (Powell et al., 2017). There is also a special type of linen meant to reduce friction and abrasions. This might be consid ered when frequent friction injuries occur, but keep in mind when friction is reduced, extra caution must be taken to prevent falls, such as slipping out of bed.

Skin tears

Accidental separation of a flap of skin occurs frequently in people who have fragile, overly dry, or overly moist skin. Especially vulnerable are those who depend on others for care and those who become restless or agitated and have poor coordination or safety awareness. These are most often minor injuries and for the most part heal without compli cations. However, they can be unsightly, painful, and may trigger more severe skin injuries. For example, a patient with chronic lower extrem ity edema who sustained a small bump to the shin with a small skin

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