What to do immediately after a burn, what to keep away from it, and how to tell a burn you can dress at home from one that needs a hospital.
Most burns we see started in a kitchen, and most of them were made worse in the first ten minutes. What you do straight away changes how the skin heals.
Cool it. Properly.
Hold the burn under cool running water for a full 20 minutes. Not thirty seconds: twenty minutes. Cool, not ice cold, and not ice.
This is the single most effective thing you can do, and it still helps up to three hours after the burn happened. Remove rings, watches and anything tight near the area before it begins to swell.
What not to put on a burn
There is a long list of household remedies, and they all make things worse:
- Toothpaste: traps heat and introduces mint oils into broken skin
- Butter, ghee or oil: traps heat
- Ice: causes a second, cold injury to already damaged tissue
- Flour or ash: contaminates the wound and has to be scrubbed off later
After cooling, cover loosely with cling film laid over the burn, or a clean non-fluffy cloth. Do not wrap tightly.
Do not burst blisters
A blister is a sterile dressing your body made. Leaving it intact is the best protection against infection. If it bursts on its own, keep the area clean and covered.
When it needs a hospital, not a dressing
Go to a hospital for burns that are:
- larger than the palm of the person’s hand
- on the face, hands, feet, genitals or across a joint
- white, leathery or charred, or numb rather than painful
- caused by chemicals or electricity
- on a baby, a young child or an elderly person, any size
Numbness is a bad sign, not a good one. It means the burn is deep enough to have damaged the nerves.
Dressing a small burn at home
For a small, shallow burn on an adult, we stock sterile non-adherent dressings, burn gel and the tape to hold them. Come in and we will show you how to change it, or message us a photo and we will tell you honestly whether it needs a doctor.