As a Doctor or Nurse, when speaking with and treating any of your patients, it is important to provide them with tips on basic medical treatments and manoeuvres they can perform on themselves or another person at home, in their workplace, or just in general. A person can never know too much on first aid and basic medical treatments, with some treatments coming in handy for themselves and might just save them a trip to the doctor, whilst others could be as important as giving them the ability to save someone else’s life.
All of these small medical tips and knowledge of treatments can come in useful when it isn’t possible to get professional attention from a doctor. For example, you could be out on a journey in the middle of nowhere, or out of hours, or may just simply not be able to contact one. In this article, we’ll look over some common situations in which you might normally seek the professional attention of a doctor, and things you can go about doing yourself in an attempt to remedy these situations – if you want to learn or be trained in how to treat these issues properly then head over to Livesaver Ed.
If you have a wart: If you find a wart somewhere on your body, you need not seek out various drugs and creams – all you need is some sticky tape! First of all, you should submerge the wart in water from approximately a quarter of an hour. After this, remove any extra skin whilst being careful not to cause bleeding. Then, get a small piece of tape and cover the wart with it for a total of six days. Continue this process until the wart goes away, soaking it in between tape applications.
Tick Bites: If you have experienced a tick bite, there is not necessarily any need to seek the attention of a medical professor – you can sort this out at home with a pair of fine tweezers. You should take the tweezers and get them as close to the skin where the bite is, and then pull with reasonable and consistent force. It is important not to use sharp jarring pulling actions at this stage, as this could separate the insect’s head from its body and leave the head stuck in your skin.
Ingrown Toenails: If you are suffering from an ingrown toenail, you should first soak the toe in warm clean water for around 10 minutes. After removing from the water and gently patting dry, slowly push a small piece of cotton underneath the side of the toenail that is being irritated. The idea is the cotton will push the edge of the nail up and stop it from irritating the skin. You should re-soak the nail every five or six hours, and replace the cotton if it falls out. There is no set duration of time that you should leave the cotton placed under the nail for, but, should the nail not start to look any better and less irritated in around two days time, you should probably seek out professional help before the nail becomes infected.