Development of family-based follow-up care system for patients with burn in Iran: Participatory action research.
Mojgan Lotfi, Vahid Zamanzadeh, Ali Ostadi and 3 others
PMID 32587729WHAT IT FOUND
Burn patients and families received a family-based follow-up system with nurse education, phone contact, and referrals; reported quality-of-life scores rose, but the study had no comparison group, so the improvement cannot be credited to the programme.
Key findings
01Patients and families received a pamphlet, booklet, and card containing follow-up file details and a phone number for contact.
02Quality-of-life scores were reported to increase after implementation, but the pre-intervention mean differs between the text and Table 1.
03Barriers to continuing the system included no hospital home-care programme and unclear legal or tariff rules for nursing care at home.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This was a single-site action-research programme with no control group and no random allocation, so it cannot show that the follow-up system caused the reported quality-of-life change. The follow-up system included several components at once: education, pamphlets and cards, phone contact, follow-up files, family participation, and referrals to burn specialists, medications, nutrition, or physiotherapy. The contribution of any single component cannot be separated. Only 64 of 70 patients completed the quality-of-life questionnaire after implementation, and the paper does not fully explain the missing patients. The reported pre-intervention quality-of-life mean differs between the text and Table 1, making the size of change unclear. The qualitative findings are described from focus-group participants and team reflections; the paper does not clearly state that patients themselves were interviewed. Legal, tariff, home-care, and resource issues are described for Iran, so transfer to other health systems may be limited.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The funder named was Tabriz University of Medical Sciences.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the rise in quality-of-life scores as proof that nurse-led follow-up works. The study had no comparison group, was run at one hospital, and bundled education, contact cards, follow-up files, family participation, and referrals to burn specialists, medications, nutrition, or physiotherapy, so the contribution of any single component cannot be separated.