Major full-thickness scald burn injury in a new born

An Observational Study of Knowledge of First Aid for Burns among Parents in Indonesia

Burns represent a large portion of injuries attending emergency departments each year, with children accounting for the biggest proportion. Appropriate first aid has been shown to help improve the outcome of burns and decrease the need for surgical intervention. Several studies outside of Indonesia demonstrate inadequate parental knowledge of burns first aid, but few evaluated interventions to improve knowledge. A period of data gathering from June to September 2022 was included the parents who have offspring aged between 18 and 12. This questionnaire was developed to achieve the objectives of this study and was based on others of a similar nature. A total of 102 participants were included in this study. In total, 102 parents (79.4% female [n = 81], 20.6% male [n = 21]) were questioned. Baseline knowledge was found to be poor overall; it was found that nearly 91% of parents did not know the first-aid procedures for treating pediatric burns. However, educational initiatives were effective in advancing this knowledge. When a child got burned, nearly 68% of parents knew to use cold running water, and about 70% knew to get help from a doctor. Cold running water being applied is an extremely positive sign, which can have the most beneficial effect on the healing of the injury. No other variables analyzed were shown to be statistically significant predictors of pre- or post-test scores (all P > 0.05). This study concluded that educational knowledge was effective to improve the parents' ability in performing first aid for burn care.

A small-scale re-evaluation of the efficacy of silver sulfadiazine for burns

Burns remain one of the most common injuries contributing to an increase in trauma incidence in hospitals, particularly in developing countries. Therefore, it is essential to identify the appropriate care for these wounds. Silver sulfadiazine has been widely used for the treatment of burns, but its efficacy has not been re-evaluated in recent years. Therefore, this small-scale study aimed at re-evaluating the use of silver sulfadiazine in patients with burns at a hospital in Magelang, Indonesia. A total of seven patients with second- and third-degree burns were involved and received silver sulfadiazine for 5 months (March to July 2020). Data on their wounds were collected three times and evaluated by using the Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC) observation method. Wound outcomes were evaluated using on the basis of wound healing by secondary intention. Silver sulfadiazine was found to be effective; 85.7% of the wound area showed granulation tissue, and 75-100% of the wound area showed epithelialisation. However, patients complained of pain during silver sulfadiazine treatment. Therefore, additional nursing interventions seem to be needed to manage burns.