Watch: How to Treat a Baby's Wound

Discover tips from The Essential Baby Care Guide's care and development program

Posted on

5 July 2017

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Heather Graham, First Aid Trainer with the St John Ambulance, demonstrates how to stop the bleeding and dress a palm wound of a baby or child.

So here we have a wound to the palm of the hand. Wounds to the palm of the hand are going to bleed quite a lot, because there's a very good blood supply to the palm of the hand itself. We also need to be aware that it could have damaged tendons or nerves, so they need to go to the hospital to get checked out. But our main aim with any severe bleeding is to control the bleeding, and to get the wound covered. With a straight wound like this, we can apply direct pressure straight over the top of the wound, and we're going to ask the casualty to raise their arm up, raise the affected part above the level of the heart. That way we can reduce the bleeding, control the bleeding, and think about covering it over.

So, if you keep the pressure on there for me, that's brilliant. So, I'm going to take the first dressing and unroll two of the sterile pads. Now, what I want to do is swap the sterile pad for the tissue. So you take the tissue off, and I'm going to put that over the top. That's brilliant. Okay, you're doing really well. Now, I'm going to use a second dressing. We're going to leave it rolled up, and we're going to place it in the palm of the hand in the same direction as the cut is going. Then we're going to close the casualty's fingers over the whole lot.

So from here, all I need to do is cover the ends of the dressing. So, we're going to use the long end to come round and round, and the only bit we're going to leave sticking out is her thumb. So, if you'll stick your thumb in the air for me, brilliant. You're doing really well. Make sure, as you're doing your bandaging that you continue to talk to your casualty. Keep them reassured, and if they're feeling a little bit shaky and a little bit cold, find a blanket just to keep them nice and warm.

When the ends come together, you're going to tie a knot. You can tie the knot around the wrist. Just make sure you're not going too tightly and cutting off the circulation. The best way to do that is to use the thumb. So we can use it to do what's called a "pinch test", where we just press on the finger for five seconds, and when we let go, we want to see all the blood rush back underneath. This tells us that although we've controlled the bleeding, we haven't cut the circulation off to the hand.