Home Safety: Preventing Burns, Cuts, and More

WebMD Home

A to Z Guides

Wound Care: Your Essential First Aid Care Guide

Print Article

Skip to Article Content

Wound Care: Your Essential First Aid Care Guide
5 Common Home Injuries How to prevent and treat common wounds.
Reducing Scars: Tips From Dermatologists How to prevent, reduce, or minimize scars.
Diabetes and Wound Care Knowing how to deal with even small wounds is critical to your diabetes care.
Preventing & Treating Burns Thermal burns, scalds, sunburns -- avoiding injury and accidents.
Reducing Pain While a Wound Heals Keep the wound covered and other tips for fast healing and less pain.
Caring for Wounds During Pregnancy From blisters to episiotomies, how to treat problems during pregnancy.
First Aid While Waiting for Help What to do about injuries while you're calling 911.
Staying Safe When Playing Sports Helmets and other sports safety gear that protect your and your kids.
Protect Bones: How to Avoid Falls Tips on home safety and hazards to identify for people with osteoporosis.
Preventing and Treating Bug Bites From spiders to mosquitoes to ticks, here's how to get the upper hand.
Quiz: First Aid for Serious Wounds If someone is seriously injured, do you know what to do until help arrives?

Home Safety: Preventing Burns, Cuts, and More

Accidents happen, right? Not necessarily. In fact, some of the most common injuries that occur at home don’t have to happen.

About a third of all injuries happen in the home, and they tend to hit small children and elderly adults most. This guide will help you prevent five common home injuries: falls, choking and suffocation, burns, poisoning, and knife cuts. While these injuries can be serious or even fatal, preventing them generally just takes a little thought and time.

Home Safety: 5 Tips for Preventing Falls

Falls are the No. 1 cause of home injuries and death in the U.S., according to the Home Safety Council. The two groups most at risk for falls are children under age 5 and adults over age 70.

Try these strategies to prevent falls at home:

Make the bathroom a no-slip zone. Install grab bars and non-slip mats or appliques in the tub or shower. Use a bathmat with a nonskid bottom and clean up any water that splashes on floors right away.
Safety-proof stairs. Remove clutter from stairs and walkways. Stairs inside and out should have handrails, preferably on both sides. Have good lighting over stairs.

For babies and toddlers, install hardware-mounted safety gates at the top and bottom of stairs. Pressure-mounted gates are less effective. Gates should have the JPMA (Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association) Certification Seal. Never use accordion-style gates.

Put a guard on indoor lofts, landings, balconies, and stair banisters if your child can slip between the posts. Plexiglas is a good option because it bends, is easy to cut, and doesn’t shatter.

Toss the throw rugs. Throw rugs are a big tripping hazard for young and old people. At the very least, tape or tack them to the floor.
Leave a light on. Ideally, have night-lights in bedrooms, bathrooms, and halls.
Make windows safe. New York City cut children’s deaths from window-related falls by a third after requiring window guards. Window screens are not strong enough to prevent falls. Install window guards with quick-release mechanisms (in case of fire) on upper floor windows. Keep furniture away from windows, especially in children’s room, and always watch children around windows.