This is a crucial first aid skill. The first step in dressing a wound is locating clean water and grabbing gauze or a cloth that you can gently use to clean the injury. If the wound is not too deep, you can do it yourself by rinsing the area with water.
Many times though, this cannot be done because of the location of the injury, so ask someone else for help before proceeding to remove dirt from around your wound. This should be done as gently as possible; try to minimize further damage to already swollen tissue.
After the wound has been cleaned, it needs to be flushed. Flushing is done by running cool to lukewarm water over the wound for a few minutes, at which point any remaining blood and debris should have been cleansed away.
You can simplify this process by using ice-cold water instead and letting it run over the area for about ten minutes. Ice-cold water will provide much more effective results than warm water; this helps stop bleeding and send shockwaves of cold, healing the area faster.
Rinsing out any wounds should be done with a gentle soap solution for a minute while flushing. This step will help prevent infection, and an infection may result in improper healing of a wound.
Once the injury has been cleaned, your next step is to cover it. First, find a bandage and wrap it around the affected areas. This should be done gently, making sure not to place too much pressure on the wound itself, to prevent further injury.
Place a strip of sterile gauze underneath your bandage, and use this as a base for the main bandage. It would help if you wrapped it around twice onto itself with enough overlap so that you do not cut open the wound when removing it later (this will prevent running water from entering wounds).
After applying the main bandage, another strip of gauze should be placed one every three inches. This strip is used to protect the wound from dirt and debris during movement.