Royal Adelaide Hospital Burns Link Therapist Program – A 10-year review

Brad Schmitt¹, Kathryn Heath¹,
¹Royal Adelaide Hospital, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Abstract

Like many burns centres around Australia the Royal Adelaide Hospital referral area has large geographical footprint. This poses challenges for follow-up care and specifically therapy services for burns survivors who reside in rural and remote areas. Improving therapy follow-up for this cohort was identified as an area of service improvement and ‘The Burns Link Therapy Program’ was created. The inaugural program was run in 2012.

The program is open to both Physiotherapists or Occupational therapists working in rural centres and includes a pre-reading and a practical training component conducted over a 3-day site visit (also includes a Women’s and Children Hospital site visit). A learning checklist is completed over the course of each visit. Since 2015, ongoing support for the program has been provided by the Josh Deegan Foundation, providing flights an accommodation for rural therapists to attend.

A total 31 therapists have been trained over the life program and we currently have 12 active therapists throughout the state and Alice Springs. The ‘Link Therapists’ have built up their service over the years and provide an average of 133 occasions of service to an average of 37 new patient referrals each year.

We have found this program to be valuable in the follow-up care of our burn survivors and plan to continue to run the program in the future. Further expansion of the program into our South-West corner of NSW referral area is also being considered.

Biography

Brad has been Senior Burns Physiotherapist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for the last 10 years and has been involved in the Link Therapist Program since inception.