Development of patient pathways for the surgical management of burn injury

There are many reasons for the development of patient pathways in burn surgery introduced at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia at the beginning of January 2005. These include education, standardization of technique, scheduling of surgical episodes and rationalization of the use of expensive therapies.

A critical appraisal of both evidence based on published work and personal/peer experience has been used to generate the current pathways.

The year 2005 was the busiest in the history of the hospital, both in numerical terms and in the proportion of major burn injuries. These protocols were effective in enabling us to cope with negligible mortality.

Although the first draft pathways work in our unit, they will undergo regular audit. It is hoped that they will form a template that can assist other services to create their own pathways.