Effect of Post-Hospital Discharge Follow-up on Health Status in Patients with Burn Injuries: A Randomized Clinical Trial.
Nastaran Heydarikhayat, Tahereh Ashktorab, Camelia Rohani and 1 others
PMID 30465002WHAT IT FOUND
Burn patients who received routine clinic care plus home visits and phone follow-up for 1.5 months had better overall health, mental and social function, and less severe scars than clinic care alone.
Pain and itch did not improve.
Key findings
01The group that received routine clinic care plus home visits and phone follow-up had higher BSHS-B total and domain scores than the group that received routine clinic care alone.
02The follow-up group had lower GHQ-28 scores than the control group, except anxiety and insomnia, which did not differ.
03The follow-up group had lower VSS scar scores than the control group, while BPI pain and VAS itch scores did not differ.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
117 patients were recruited, but only 86 were analysed, and the paper states reasons such as distance, finances, partial healing, traditional medicine, and death. Follow-up was only 1.5 months, so longer-term pain, itch, anxiety, scar outcomes, and rehospitalisation are not shown. The intervention combined routine clinic care, home visits, and telenursing, so the effect of any single component cannot be separated. Patients were recruited by convenience sampling at a burn centre in Kermanshah, Iran, which may limit generalisability. The mean number of home visits was 1.27±1.58, ranging from 1 to 6, so the number of visits varied. The paper reports blinding only for clinical staff. The paper includes adults with burns greater than 15% body surface area; mean burn severity was 30.37±12.66 in controls and 30.38±14.55 in the intervention group, so results may not apply to smaller burns.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that home visits alone caused the improvement. Patients also received routine burn clinic care and telenursing, and the paper does not test those components separately.