Ms Pei Fen Seah¹

¹Department of Physiotherapy, Singapore General Hospital, , Singapore

Abstract:

The aim of medical care, including burn care, is to enable people to return to functional lives after illness or injury. With burns becoming increasingly survivable, enabling return to functionality has become a high priority. Measuring outcomes is essential for optimising and evaluating the quality of care. Outcome measures allow us to set and maintain standards of care within a service, monitor and compare services nationally and internationally, and interpret research and audit findings. Reflecting its importance, there has been an increasing amount of literature on outcomes for burns care in recent years and much of it is relevant to therapy. A documentation audit conducted on 20 randomly chosen burn injury cases admitted to Singapore General Hospital revealed the lack of consensus on and utilisation of therapy-related outcome measurement tools. To address this gap and select the most relevant therapy-related outcome measures, we conducted a literature review of outcome measures in the areas of joint mobility, strength, functional ability, scar and quality of life. With the employment of the most relevant outcome measures, clinicians and researchers will be able to better evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions and provide suggestions for further advancements in burn care.

Biography:

Pei Fen is a Senior Physiotherapist with the Department of Physiotherapy, Singapore General Hospital. She graduated with a Diploma in Physiotherapy from Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore, in 2008 and is currently pursuing Masters in Burn Care with Queen Mary University, London. Pei Fen has eight years of working experience in managing patients with Burns injuries and Plastic reconstruction surgeries, both in the acute and outpatient settings. In 2012, Pei Fen was awarded the Health Manpower Development Plan (HMDP) fellowship in rehabilitation for burns and reconstructive surgery, which she completed at Shriners Hospital-Galveston and UTMB Blocker Burn Unit, USA.