Quality Indicators for Hospital Burn Care: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Background The treatment of severe burns requires the management of a specialized multidisciplinary team and the coordination of several hospital services. Evaluating the quality of care provided to acute burn patients through quality indicators makes it possible to develop and implement measures aiming at better results. There is a lack of information on which indicators evaluate care in burn patients. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify a list of quality indicators used to evaluate the quality of hospital care provided to acute burn patients and indicate the gaps in current knowledge. Method A comprehensive scoping review (PRISMA-ScR) was conducted in four databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Lilacs/VHL). Potentially relevant articles were evaluated for eligibility. General data and the identified quality indicators were collected for each included article. Each indicator was classified as a structure, process, or outcome indicator. Results A total of 1548 studies were identified, 82 were included, and their reference list was tracked, adding 19 more. Thus, data were collected from 101 studies. This review identified eight structure quality indicators, 72 process indicators, and 19 outcome indicators listed and subdivided according to their objectives. Conclusion This study obtained a list of quality indicators already used to monitor and evaluate the hospital care of acute burn patients, which may be useful for other research or be used in quality improvement programs. Study Registration: Protocol was registered on the Open Science Framework platform on June 27, 2022 (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/NAW85).