Pick a dressing in 3 taps
Answer three questions about the wound. Nurses ask these same three, in this order, because infection changes everything, then drainage, then the wound bed.
Q1Any signs of infection?
Q2How much drainage?
Q3What does the wound look like?
Tap your answers and the best dressing appears here.
Meet the 8 dressings
Tap a card to flip it. The back tells you when to use it, when to skip it, and why.
The moisture meter
Slide from a dry wound to a soaking wet one. The goal is always the middle: moist enough for new cells to crawl across, dry enough that the skin around it stays healthy.
Debridement: getting dead tissue out
A wound with dead tissue cannot heal, because dead tissue feeds bacteria and blocks new cells. Tap each method to compare how fast, how painful, and how selective it is.
Troubleshoot the wound vac
Negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) pulls out extra fluid and bacteria through foam sealed under film, and is thought to boost blood flow to the wound bed. Pick what you see.
Build a healing plate
Tap a slice of the plate. Healing raises the body's need for energy and building blocks, so each nutrient has a job.
Tap a slice to see why the wound needs it.
Can't eat enough, but the gut works? Oral supplements or tube feeding come first, because using the gut keeps it healthy and carries fewer infection risks than IV nutrition. Higher risk for poor healing: diabetes, malabsorption (Crohn disease, GI surgery, liver disease), cancer, major trauma or surgery, sepsis, and fever.
Keep it clean
🧼 Hand hygiene, every time
Clean hands and aseptic technique for every dressing change, because the wound is an open door for bacteria.
🧪 Culture first
Collect the wound culture before the first antibiotic dose. The antibiotic can suppress bacteria and make the culture falsely negative.
💊 Then the antibiotic
Give the first dose on time. Do not wait for the culture result, because the infection keeps spreading while you wait.
Check yourself
Tap an answer. You get the why right away.
Ready to try it on a patient?
Wound Care Cart: 24 simulated wound cases. Read the wound, pick from the cart, and see the why.
Evidence and clinical sources
- Harding et al., Lewis's Medical-Surgical Nursing, 12th ed., Elsevier, Chapter 12: Inflammation and Wound Healing (Tables 12.14 and 12.15).
- Potter, Perry, Stockert, and Hall, Fundamentals of Nursing, 11th ed., Elsevier (wound care and irrigation).
- NCSBN NCLEX-RN Test Plan
For learning only. Always follow your nursing program, the provider's orders, and your facility's wound care policy.