sonstermonster

Orders were to cleanse and pack with mesalt. The doc. had little experience with wound care. I spoke with our ET nurse, she said it is not best practice to irrigate a wound where you are unable to see the wound bed. Sounds logical to me. Also The packing is light packing, packing should NEVER be tight packing..so minimal to no pain should be felt, unless the tunnel is small, perhaps a pilonidal sinus, may be tender, since the entry site is so small. She said it is appropriate to soak N/S lightly pack, pull out and repack with dry mesalt..especially if the wound has a high amount exudate. Very informative experience for a new grad.

question I am a new grad learning about wound care with my preceptor at the hospital. We had a patient that had a 7" incision- a portion dehisced, abd. area, and left a 5 cm tunnel. In terms of cleaning and packing. I asked her if it was appropriate to irrigate a wound in which we are unable to see the base of the wound. She of course said yes it was appropriate...and went through with irrigation and and packing. I felt very uncomfortable with this. I tried to find out the correct way of cleaning a deep wound, which is excreting large amts of serosang. drainage. I am wondering if this is the correct way...another nurse had shown me another technique. She confirmed my suspicion that we never irrigate a wound that we can not see the wound base. She said since you cant irrigate you soak your ribbon gauze, ie. 1" in N/S then pack the wound, then remove this ribbon and repack with your ordered ribbon packing ie. mesalt ribbon packing. And then you place the external drsg. This seemed logical to me? However I just wanted to see if this is common practice?