Need some help with my wounds abroad!

Published Sep 9, 2011

16 Posts

Hey all. I'm a new grad RN who has not practiced yet and is instead backpacking through southeast asia for a few months before I begin working. I recently had a spill on a motorbike in Malaysia (I'm ok...no structural damage, just some bad scrapes) and need some advice on taking care of my wounds on the road. My question is regarding whether I should let my wounds dry so that they scab over which hopefully provides a protective barrier against infection or not. I am not concerned with scarring at all. I mostly have abrasians on my hands, R knee, and R shin. Dressing the wounds every day is pretty expensive and cumbersome over here especially because there are a lot of small abrasions scattered around. There are a few that are a bit deeper than the rest but even they scab over pretty well if I let them dry. I dressed them and applied antiseptic for the first 3 days but then ran out of my supplies (which broke the budget quite a bit) and am now wondering if letting them dry and take longer to heal may be a more convenient way for me to deal with this. I figured I could shower and wash them at night which would moisten them up and remove some of the dry pus and then let them dry out again while I sleep/throughout the morning. Any advice would be great. I didn't get a whole lot of experience with wounds in school and certainly didn't receive much training on dealing with them outside of the hospital while backpacking in foreign countries which can be rather dirty. Thanks in advance.

Mike