Development and Implementation of an Innovative Burn Nursing Handbook for Quality Improvement

Evidence-based burn nursing literature is extremely limited and often nonexistent. As a result, there is a lack of standardization in burn nursing care. Our objective was to evaluate burn nursing knowledge at an academic medical center and to implement innovative educational tools to enhance staff competency and improve the quality of care. A collaboration of practicing clinical nurses developed a 24-question knowledge assessment survey (presurvey) to evaluate fundamental burn nursing knowledge (fluid management, burn pathophysiology, burn-related procedures, wound care, and infection control). Pre-education knowledge surveys were administered to 59 burn nurses electronically. A writing team of new and experienced nurses was established and a 51-page handbook focusing on areas of need identified in the survey developed. This book was disseminated to staff as required for reading. Post-educational surveys were sent to the same nurses who completed the initial survey. Forty-six nurses (46/59, 78.0%) completed the survey, with a mean (SD) of 55.9 (11.0)% of questions being answered correctly. Postsurveys sent to the same 46 nurses who completed the presurvey had a response rate of 78.3% (36/46). We observed a significant increase in correctly answered questions (mean [SD]: 69.6 [8.7]%, P < .001) in the postsurvey intervention. The handbook improved education and significantly improved overall fundamental burn knowledge of practicing nursing staff. The use of electronic surveys to drive development of targeted educational interventions provides evidence-based tools for establishing burn nursing standards and developing quality improvement metrics.