Stratus has a number of practices related to incident reporting, emergency response, personal protective equipment, and so on.  In terms of First Aid, there are 14 specific treatments of injury or illness that classify an incident as First Aid.  Treatment can be as simple as covering a wound with a bandage.  As a reminder, everyone working for Stratus is required to verbally report all incidents to their supervisor immediately. Once you report an injury or illness to your supervisor, the supervisor will report the incident to the PM and Safety advisor and they will determine the classification of the incident. 

Initially, the injury should be properly treated, and the injury reported promptly after proper care and treatment is provided.  If you’re like most people, you may take wound healing for granted.  Typically people get a small cut, put on a bandage and carry on with their activities.  However, healing of even small wounds is biologically a complex sequence of events. Take for example, the basic fact that everyone bleeds when they get cut.  But there is more to it than just that – the blood clots to prevent blood loss but also to protect the wound. Blood-borne oxygen is essential for healing and the right balance of oxygen is needed.  With the right balance, the wound is repaired, rebuilt, and strengthened.

The healing process seems simple, but it is not.  Certain factors can disrupt the process, such as inadequate blood supply to the wound, diabetes, and high blood pressure.  A wound that is not getting enough blood could take at least twice as long to heal, or may not heal at all.  By some estimates, as many as 6.5 million people in the United States suffer with wounds that are not healing well (Johns Hopkins Medicine Health Library).

It’s important to follow proper steps of first aid treatment for a wound of any size – no matter how small.  Proper treatment is even more important on work sites where we deal with water, soil, and chemicals that could complicate the healing process. 

REMEMBER:  At Stratus we do not skip steps in safety, so take a couple minutes to properly treat any wound, at work or at play! 

Thanks to: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/conditions/surgical_care/how_wounds_heal_134,143/