6 Types of Wounds Every Simulation Kit Should Include

This article outlines the six most common wound types that nursing and medical students must learn to treat during simulation-based training. It explains why each type of wound matters, the risks involved, and the essential supplies needed in simulation kits to prepare students for real-world wound care scenarios.

What you’ll learn:

• Why simulation kits are essential for safe wound care training
• The differences between scrapes/abrasions, lacerations, punctures, avulsions, burns, and bedsores
• Key medical tools and supplies required for treating each wound type
• How manikins and simulated patients help replicate realistic wound care situations
• The importance of training for both routine and emergency wound management
• How Pristine Medical wound kits provide all the essentials for student training

All nursing and medical students must learn about the different types of wounds and the best ways to treat them. Simulation-based training is one of the most effective ways to teach these lessons, as it eliminates the safety risk to human patients. A student can use a simulation kit to help evaluate, assess, and treat the simulated wounds of manikins or trained humans.

A standardized wound care kit may contain the following medical supplies and items:

• Medical dressing tray

• Gauze bandages

• Under pads

• Sterile medical gloves

• Abdominal pads

• Wound closures

• Suture removal kit

• Staple removal kit

• Wound irrigation tip

• Normal saline

• Syringe

• Surgical tape

Some wound simulation kits are more specific toward treating certain types of wounds rather than all types. That is why you should ensure your wound simulation kit has the supplies needed to treat the most common types of wounds.

Below are the six main types of wounds that every simulation kit should address:

1) Scrapes and Abrasions

Most people incur superficial wounds like scrapes and abrasions in their everyday lives. All it takes is for the surface of someone’s skin to aggressively rub against a rough surface for them to receive an abrasion on their outer skin. Many abrasions are minor and only cause redness and slight pain, which most people can tolerate without seeking medical attention.

On the other hand, the more serious abrasions can result in severe redness, mild bleeding, and a higher risk of infection if there is a slight opening in the outer skin. The best thing for someone to do is clean their wounds properly to avoid infection. They should seek professional wound care from an urgent care clinic or emergency room, depending on the circumstances.

Nurses and medical professionals require a wound simulation kit that can effectively remove small debris particles and clean wounds with antiseptic solutions. Such supplies for a wound kit to treat abrasions might include:

• Medical tape

• Sterile Dressings

• Gauze pads

• Antiseptic wipes (wound cleanser)

• Gloves

• Tweezers

Students can use these items to clean wounds, apply antiseptic solutions, and remove embedded debris particles from them. Although abrasions are not the most serious wounds, students should still exercise caution and patience when treating them in a simulated training environment. It will prepare them for the experience of treating low to high-level abrasions in a real clinical setting.

2) Lacerations

Lacerations are big tears or deep cuts in the skin. Most people who suffer laceration wounds have been cut with sharp objects, such as glass and knives. Even small cuts can be considered lacerations if a sharp object fully penetrated the outer skin.

Laceration wounds are serious because they result in severe bleeding and an extremely high risk of infection. Students treating lacerations will need to disinfect the wound and then use sutures to stitch the open skin together to reduce any further risk of infection. From there, students will use dressings to cover and protect the sutured wound to reduce the risk further.

Some of the best supplies for treating lacerations in a wound simulation kit include:

• Sutures

• Hemostatic gauzes

• Sterilized syringes

• Antiseptic solutions

• Medical gloves

• Dressings

• Scissors

• Adhesive wound closure strips

Nurses and medical students must have complete confidence in cleaning, closing, and dressing wounds before practicing on real patients. Emergency wound management is a critical task that requires skill, knowledge, and precision to protect the safety and security of the patient.

3) Punctures

Puncture wounds are much deeper injuries than lacerations. Anyone stabbed or punctured by knives, needles, nails, or animal teeth has suffered puncture wounds. Most people cannot tell their severity from the outside because the sharp objects have likely caused deep, severe internal damage to the organs and tissues under the skin.

Simulation wound kits should have the following supplies to treat puncture wounds:

• Wound cleanser / Antiseptic solutions

• Wound depth probes

• Sterile dressings and gauzes

• Simulated Antibiotic Ointment

• Cather tip syringe/bulb syringe

Students training in wound care need to conduct a deep tissue assessment to understand the extent of the puncture damage. And, of course, cleaning and treatment are also critical to prevent dangerous contamination and bacterial infections, such as tetanus. Preventing infections should be at the top of every student’s mind.

When patients don’t receive proper care for their puncture wounds, infections can lead to abscess formation, causing redness, pain, and swelling of the affected skin. That is why students must learn how to identify these signs of infection to know the appropriate treatment to administer.

4) Avulsions

An avulsion wound occurs when a portion of a person’s skin and underlying tissue, such as a ligament or tendon, is aggressively torn out and removed from their body. Avulsions normally occur after high-impact accidents and injuries, such as car collisions, long falls, and industrial accidents involving heavy machinery.

Due to the vast amount of tissue loss and bleeding, patients will require immediate wound care and attention to control the bleeding and preserve the remaining tissues. They will likely need surgical intervention to repair the damage, but nurses and medical professionals will still need to take preliminary actions to prevent the wound from worsening.

Here are the best avulsion wound care tools for a simulation kit:

• Trauma shears

• Dressings

• Tourniquets

• Gauzes and bandages

• Saline solution

• Sutures

Students will face some of their greatest educational lessons and challenges when training to treat simulated avulsions. For this reason, high-fidelity manikins are usually required for teaching such lessons because they can mimic the look and symptoms of realistic avulsions. When students practice on these manikins, they will be better prepared for the real-life emergencies associated with avulsions.

5) Burns

Any decent wound simulation kit will have accessories for treating burn injuries, whether they are first, second, or third-degree burns. A burn injury occurs when someone suffers any tissue damage from a fire, flame, or anything else that is extremely hot. The symptoms of burn wounds may include skin redness, charring, blistering, pain, or some other surface discoloration or disfigurement.

The most common medical accessories and tools in a simulation kit for treating burn wounds include the following:

• Burn severity charts

• Sterile medical gloves

• IV bags / tubes

• Hydrogel sheets

• Non-adherent dressings

• Simulated burn gel dressings

Burn care simulations generally involve pain control, cooling, wound dressing, and long-term care. The road to recovery for burned victims can be a long one, especially if they suffered first or second-degree burns. Students must learn to diagnose and treat burn injuries with extra special care and consideration. Patients are most often in a great deal of pain until they receive anesthetic treatment, so they need the best care possible.

6) Bedsores and Ulcers

Long-term recovery patients, such as those suffering from comas or paralysis, spend all day and night in their beds. Their skin’s surface constantly presses against their bed without any pressure relief due to their immobility. This constant pressure against their skin will eventually cause redness, open sores, and potentially deeper wounds that may even expose the patient’s muscle and bone.

The best simulation medical supplies and tools for treating bedsore and ulcer wounds include the following:

• Skin protectant creams

• Foam dressings

• Pillows or wedges for repositioning

• Dressings

• Gauze pads

Simulated bedsore wound care teaches students to prevent bedsores and ulcers by periodically repositioning patients in their beds, assessing their skin symptoms, and treating wounds when needed. Manikins are the best simulation tools to use in conjunction with a comprehensive wound care kit. Students can practice turning, evaluating, and treating the simulated wounds built into the manikins.

Final Tips

Most wound care situations are urgent or emergencies. Students must learn how to treat various types of wounds in stressful environments, such as hospitals and urgent care centers. Simulation manikins will serve as useful tools for most of the wound care lessons until students gain enough experience to practice on simulated human patients.

Simulated human patients will not have real wounds to heal, but they can simulate the wounds by acting the same way an actual patient would if they had a particular type of wound. They will also provide realistic responses to each student’s wound care steps, indicating whether they are successful or not. It is a great way to give advanced students more confidence in their wound care abilities before using them in a real-world clinical setting.

Get Your Wound Care Kit Today!

A comprehensive wound simulation kit is essential to have when teaching nursing and medical students how to treat the most common wounds. All you need is a trustworthy supplier that offers high-quality wound kits of this advanced level.

Pristine Medical is the premier supplier of all-inclusive wound kits for simulation purposes. It has a wide variety of essential medical supplies and tools for tending to all six common wounds outlined above. They are perfect for preparing your nursing and medical students for performing real-life wound care applications.