The classification of, and dressing choice, for skin tears in the pre-hospital setting

Skin tears can have significant consequences for both the patient and the healthcare provider. An ageing population, together with an increasing variety of comorbidities with associated medications, all combined with the volume of emergency calls related to slips, trips and falls, ambulance staff have become a front-line service for wound interventions (Bateman, 2014; Brown et al, 2019; Hickey & Ayers, 2021). Therefore, it is important that ambulance staff are educated in the assessment and management of wounds. Skin tears are a wound type commonly seen by ambulance staff when called out to attend patients in the pre-hospital setting. This review will look at the various assessment tools available for classifying skin tears to determine which assessment tool would be most appropriate for use within the ambulance service, with an additional focus on the present dressing regimen used within the East of England Ambulance Service (EEAST) for the management of skin tears in the pre-hospital setting.