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So now lets talk about venous bleeding. Venous bleeding is normally characterized by dark
red oozing blood not bright red spurting blood like arterial. In this case, most of the time,
venous bleeding stops on its own in 4 to 6 minutes if you did nothing. But we can easily
control it with direct pressure and then a bandage and then decide whether or not the
person should go in by ambulance or whether they are stable enough that they can actually
go in by private automobile or someone driving them in. I always encourage driving them in
even if you do take them in by another coworker or someone else by their own vehicle. Because
if they , maybe have a hard time seeing their own blood. Maybe they, you know, for whatever
reasons they have kind of a psychogenic shock thing going on, not a true hypovolemic shock.
Then its always good to have a passenger plus it might hurt, you just never know. So, its
always a good idea to have someone drive them in or have an ambulance bring them in. He
obviously lacerated the tip of his finger, he was holding direct pressure on it with
just his thumb. But it smiles on me. In other words, i can look at the cut and when he opened
up his finger it kind of did this fish mouth opening. That means it is a full thickness
cut and its probably gonna need some stitches. If it did'nt, if it stayed together when he
showed me and it was just kind off oozing, that might be okay to bandage and heal on
its own after its cleaned. And we use a triple antibiotic ointment to be sure to combat the
possible bacteria. There's also the concept that if today's person had not had a tetanus
shot in a while its important that they find out what their records are and if they need
a booster they might get that because the material was dirty. And so, i'm just gonna
give this 4/4. I see that the wound is right there. I apply direct pressure over the finger
tip. There's blood because he's been holding it for a while and a little bit of blood goes
a long long way. So what looks like a massive amount of blood might just be that the red
blood cells might have smeared around, dripped. And don't be distracted by that. But you might
take an another language and dry that off. Ask the patient did you have pain anywhere
else or cut anywhere else. He says no. Its just right here. Its just been, i've been
holding it, its been running into my hand. So i put that direct pressure on there. I
wait to see if it leaks through. Most heinous bleeding will stop with direct pressure unless
he has a bleeding disorder or is on blood thinners of some sort for another condition.
In this case, he says he's not on any other medication. He's not taking any, over any,
you know, behind the counter pills. He's pretty much a healthy guy so i'm not too worried
about it. He's stable, he's pink, he's warm, he's dry. He had no loss of consciousness,
there is no other life threatening conditions. I don't believe i have to call EMS at this
point unless we want an ambulance to transport him. At this point though, its not leaking
through. So i'm now gonna wrap it with tape. What we are doing is we're basically making
our own band aid. Its kind of a hefty band aid at that. But its still a band aid. Its
just there to control the bleeding a little bit and cover the wound so it doesn't get
any dirt or debris in it while we either transport this individual to the med center for stitches
or getting it cleaned out, get his tetanus booster. Or until we decide what our next
step treatment is to be. Again, bleeding is under control, patient is stable, probably
not a 911 call. We can decide to take them in with an another co worker safely or whatever
the protocol is for the work place.