Surviving Burn Injury: Drivers of Length of Hospital Stay

Abstract

With a reduction in the mortality rate of burn patients, patient length of stay (LOS) is increasingly adopted as an outcome measure. Some studies have attempted to identify factors that explain a burn patient's expected LOS. However, few have investigated the association between LOS and a patient's mental and socioeconomic status. There is anecdotal evidence for links between these factors and uncovering these will aid in better addressing the specific physical and emotional needs of burn patients, and facilitate the planning of scarce hospital resources. Here, we employ machine learning (clustering) and statistical models (regression) to investigate whether a segmentation by socioeconomic/mental status can improve the performance and interpretability of an upstream predictive model, relative to a unitary model derived for the full adult population of patients. Although we found no significant difference in the performance of the unitary model and segment-specific models, the interpretation of the segment-specific models reveals a reduced impact of burn severity in LOS prediction with increasing adverse socioeconomic and mental status. Furthermore, the models for the socioeconomic segments highlight an increased influence of living circumstances and source of injury on LOS. These findings suggest that, in addition to ensuring that the physical needs of patients are met, management of their mental status is crucial for delivering an effective care plan.

A meta‐ethnography of developing and living with post‐burn scars

“…Besides the review findings highlight the existence of hopelessness and despair among these persons. The lack of social support can interfere adversely with their posttraumatic growth and lead to poorer recovery outcomes (Hudson et al, 2017; Onah et al, 2021). This finding highlights a need for greater attention to ensure their access to and utilization of mental health support early in the recovery process.…”

The effect of COVID‐19 pandemic on the number of patients in burns services

“…Burn injury is one of the top 10 causes of trauma globally. 1 It is a trauma that can happen at any age and result in serious multiple organ failure or death. Today, the increase in the number of burn centres and the establishment of multidisciplinary units that deal specifically with burns have contributed to reducing mortality and morbidity rates related to burns.…”

“…Burn injury is one of the top 10 causes of trauma globally 1 . It is a trauma that can happen at any age and result in serious multiple organ failure or death.…”