Providing wound care for your child at home

Your child may come home with unhealed areas that still require dressing changes. You will be instructed on how to change dressings before you leave the hospital. It is not necessary to maintain a sterile environment for home dressing changes, but they should take place in as clean an area as possible. Whoever is doing the dressing change should:

• Wash hands well before and after changing the dressings.

• Set out and open the new dressings before removing the old ones.

• Use lukewarm water when bathing your child (be sure your hot water tank temperature is set below 120°F (48.89°C) so that very hot water cannot be turned on accidentally).

• Be gentle when bathing burned skin.

If it appears that the dressing changes are extremely painful for your child, you may want to discuss pain medication with your child's doctor.

The new skin over the burn area is more sensitive than the skin over the rest of the body. To protect your child's skin, make sure your child takes the following steps:

• Wear comfortable clothes.

• Try to avoid physical trauma.

• Avoid going out in the sun as much as possible. Put clothes, a hat, and sunscreen (with a sun protection factor [SPF] of 15 or higher) on your child when in the sun. Even when in the sun for only a short period of time, your child's healing skin can become sunburned easily.

• Do not stay out in cold weather. Healing burn areas are also sensitive to cold.