NSW Severe Burn Injury Service

Chair: John Harvey
Deputy Chair: Christine Parker

Burns are common injuries in the community. Whilst the majority of burn injuries heal with no or minimal medical intervention, a small proportion of burn victims sustain devastating and life-threatening injuries, requiring intensive and long-term treatment.

The nature and complexity of severe burn injury requires a collaborative approach to patient care. This is provided by a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in the management of severe burns in a Burn Unit with supporting services such as: critical care, surgery, reconstruction and rehabilitation.

In 2003, the NSW Severe Burn Injury Service was established. Additional recurrent funding of $1.5 million was provided by the GMTT. The Service contributes to the care of patients with a severe burn injury by:

Bringing together the expertise required to coordinate clinical services across the continuum of care - from initial hospital admission through to hospital discharge, rehabilitation and ongoing care.

• Sharing clinical expertise
• Implementing a standardised Model of Care across the three NSW Burn Units (Children's Hospital at Westmead, Concord Hospital and Royal North Shore Hospital)
• Developing standardised clinical practice guidelines for patient care
• Increasing the focus on prevention, improving links to community outreach services for patients and undertaking research to improve patient care

• Model of Care for people with severe burn injuries across three NSW Burn Units has been developed in consultation with other disciplines and consumer groups. http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pubs/2004/burninjurymoc.html
• Emergency Management and Transfer Guidelines for patient care developed http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pubs/2004/burninjuryguidelines.html .This publication and the Standardised Model of Care are also available in hard copy via the NSW Severe Burn Injury Service.
• A Tissue Culture Laboratory situated at Concord Burns Unit, culturing skin to use in skin grafting procedures for patients at all three Burn Units and conducting tissue culture research.
• Integral involvement in writing the National Burn Disaster Plan, AUSBURNPLAN.
• Rural and metropolitan education by nursing, allied health and medical Burn Service staff to health care professionals.
• Formation of a Clinical Practice Review Committee to review deaths, adverse outcomes and trends from data and patient transfer issues. This committee has developed a two-way feedback form to be used for all transfer and medical retrieval patients to the Burn Service.
• Allied Health and Nursing Burns Clinical Practice Guidelines, available on our webpage.
• Formation of Prevention Committee with representation from burn clinicians, NSW Health Injury Prevention Policy Branch, NSW Fire Brigades, KidsSafe, Health Promotion Unit CHW and NSW Dept of Fair Trading.
• A new project designed to educate teenagers in rural and regional Australia on the dangers of burn injuries and train them in basic burns first aid has commenced with the pilot program run in a Tamworth High School.
• Data collection on all patients treated as in and out patients for acute burn injuries in the three Burn Units that comprise the SBIS.