The impact of assault by vitriolage on quality of life: Integrative review

Abstract

Aims To analyse quality of life post vitriolage and explore factors affecting an individual's everyday functioning after an acid attack. Design Integrative review. Data Sources Articles (N = 570) retrieved from Medline, CINAHL Embase and Psychinfo between 2004–2017. Reference chaining and hand‐searching yielded 12 further articles. A total 12 articles were reviewed. Review Methods Whittemore and Knalf (2005) Journal of Advanced Nursing, 52, 546–553. Results Five themes were identified; contextual factors, physical wounds, psychological wounds, social wounds, and legal factors, as demonstrated by a conceptual model exploring traumatic events experienced by survivors. Conclusion The event, the burn injury itself, scarring and ocular damage are core factors that impair quality of life. Patients find it difficult to reintegrate into society following the assault and discrepancies between medico‐legal and social services further prevent them from achieving their pre‐morbid level of functioning. Nurses can use the biopsychosocial findings of this review to provide effective care for those assaulted by acid. It also provides a basis of discussion and application to other permanently disfiguring conditions and intentional injuries. Impact This review has found survivors of acid assaults experience legal, physical, psychological, and social problems. Findings suggest that no single person will have the same experiences since the burden of injury is dependent on socio‐cultural and contextual factors rather than the degree of injury alone. Inadequate coordination between multidisciplinary services hinders reintegration into society; causing permanent traumatization for some survivors. This review can assist nurses in understanding how acid assaults impact on quality of life to enable more holistic care provision.

Data Analysis and Presentation in Integrative Reviews: A Narrative Review

“…Mostly, figures and graphs were complemented with narrative discussions and codes to make them appealing and useful for data presentation. Didcott and Taylor (2019) examined the quality of life post vitriolage and explored factors affecting an individual’s everyday functioning after an acid attack. They complemented the narrative discussion of their review findings with an excellent figure depicting the contextual, precipitating, and intervening factors and the effect of physical, social, psychological wounds, and legal factors on the quality of life of vitriolage survivors.…”

“…Nevertheless, the presentation of data in an innovative manner speaks to the nuances of data analysis methods employed in integrative reviews. The presented conceptual models were: conceptual model of nurse-patient therapeutic engagement on acute inpatient wards (McAllister et al, 2019), conceptual model of traumatic events experienced by vitriolage survivors (Didcott & Taylor, 2019), a conceptual model of associations between aspects of home care and adverse events (Haltbakk et al, 2019), conceptual model depicting the process and outcomes of group-based interventions for postpartum depression (Gillis & Parish, 2019), conceptual model of volunteering in dementia care (Hurst et al, 2019), conceptual model of knowledge and perceptions on aging (Parish et al, 2019), the illness trajectory and transitional experience of men with breast cancer (Younas et al, 2019), feature of virtual nursing simulation (circle of engagement) (Shin et al, 2019), conceptual framework of social position in relation to mainstream society and conceptual model of the link between social determinants of health and marginalization (Baah et al, 2019), and conceptual framework for care of the near-term infant (Jackson et al, 2019).…”

“…The figures and graphs illustrated the implementation of concepts and constructs in the analysis and generation of final results of integrative reviews. Mostly, figures and graphs were complemented with narrative discussions and codes to make them appealing and useful for data presentation Didcott and Taylor (2019). examined the quality of life post vitriolage and explored factors affecting an individual's everyday functioning after an acid attack.…”