Common Types of Burns

Travis Stork: Today, it’s the best ways to protect your body on the job and that’s
a great a question because we do all get burned no matter what we
do on the job. We’re going to talk about the best way to treat a
burn but to do that, you got to understand the common types of
burns.

Now, first degree burn, that’s just the outer layer, the epidermis
gets burned.

Drew Ordon: Like a sunburn.

Travis Stork: A little sunburn and really not that big of a deal. But second
degree, you're getting a little more serious. It gets kind of red. You
can get blisters. It actually goes into the dermis which is the second
layer of skin. Good news is, as long as it doesn’t through the
dermis, it will grow back. But the problem gets to third degree
burns. And strangely, if you compare second and third degree,
third degree sometimes doesn’t look as bad but its much worse.

The easiest way for me to tell it, it can be kind of yellowish, clear
pale. I’ll ask a patient, “Can you feel this?” Because a third degree
burn goes all the way through the outer and the inner layer and you
loose all sensation. This in the third degree burn will not grow
back. That’s when you start talking about skin grafts.

I'm going to tell you why this is important. A cup of coffee, 140
degrees hot, I do that within five seconds. If this is 140 degrees,
you can have a third degree burn as a possibility. So, it’s no joke.