Self-care tips
Parents should be supported to manage their child’s eczema. Pharmacists can do this by ensuring that parents:
- Have treatments at home to treat flare-ups at the earliest possible stage
- Recognise when a flare-up is starting – increased dryness, itching, redness, swelling and irritability
- Know that emollient treatment should continue when TCS are started
- Know which treatments to use where, how much and how frequently
- Understand the stepped care approach and know when to step up and step down
- Understand how to apply emollients – quickly and generously, in the direction of hair growth, while trying to avoid rubbing in as that can trigger itching
- Understand how to apply TCS – one finger-tip unit for an area equivalent to the flat area of two hands or enough to get a faint sheen on the skin.