Ms Elizabeth Capell¹, Ms Hana Menezes¹

¹Alfred Health, Melbourne, Australia

Abstract:

Background:
There was a significant increase in burns admissions over a 12-month period from 2019 to 2020 at the Victorian Adult Burns Service (VABS). The complexity of patients has also increased over this period with a 37% climb in patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) over the 12-month period. The increase in burns admissions, outpatient encounters and telehealth management has resulted in an overall rise in demand.
The VABS at Alfred Health shares their experience of the impact of delivering state service burn care in a lockdown state from a multi-disciplinary team (MDT) perspective. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Victoria has experienced 5 lockdowns. Demand on the service has been unprecedented. The logistics of delivering care more challenging than ever.
The aim of this presentation is to explore patterns of presentations, the service changes, challenges of care delivery, discharge planning and follow up and reflect on positive ongoing changes for the service.

Methods:
The perspectives of medical, nursing and allied health throughout the covid-19 pandemic will be presented.
Retrospective data collection from various data sources including Burns Registry of Australia and New Zealand and VABS datasets.

Results:
Analyse Inpatient, outpatient and telehealth data from an MDT perspective. Analyse demographic data, mechanisms of injury and length of stay.
Discuss a patient journey case study through their experience of a modified burns service through lockdown.

Conclusion:
Discuss the impact of the Covid-19 lockdowns to VABS from a service level, clinician level and patient perspective.

Biography:

Liz Capell is the current Burns Allied Health Team Leader and Hana Menezes is the Burns Nurse Practitioner at the Victorian Adult Burns Service in Melbourne.