skin tears

ok. I am a home health nurse I have been getting a lot of patients out of a rehab center that has skin tears but all they do with them is put a tegaderm on them.

so when they finally get home, they have an old tegaderm, with an old infected skin tear underneath. that usually still has all the old blood under there too. that when I get the tegaderm off, just pulls off more skin, and bleeds more. Just the other day the tegaderm had a date of 9 days ago. the patient said the nurses were waiting for it to just fall off. when you could see that the area was infected.

what do you recommend for skin tears? we usually use adaptic? and then cover it? if that is what ya all do? how long? or what do you recommend? and how often to change it?

Thanks!!!