Mass casualty incidents resulting in burn injuries present some unique challenges. The burn management of those injured requires specialist skills, expert knowledge and timely availability of specialist resources. With simple yet effective standardised approaches to burn care in mass casualty incidents, patient outcome can be improved and local health system capability for burn care strengthened.
Burn Assessment Team development and implementation has thus been recognised as a priority. A three-day UCPM focused Burn Assessment Team training course was undertaken in The Netherlands, delivered by an expert faculty from the Consortium led by Interburns, bringing together five European burn assessment teams.
Throughout the training, Burn Assessment Team familiarised themselves with the essential EU policies and UCPM procedures and the European Burn Response Plan, and immersed themselves in a full day mass burn simulation exercise. Five teams from five countries/regions (Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland/Norway, Italy, and Norway) participated in this simulation.
“A very, very impressive course. I really feel that I have gained a lot of understanding of how the European system works and I feel much better prepared for a potential future mission. I sincerely hope that this course will continue for a long time and be provided to many colleagues throughout Europe”.
Each team consisted of an experienced burn surgeon, nurse, burn anaesthetist or intensivist, and a coordinator. The teams were tasked to undertake a secondary triage assessment of multiple burn victims following a fire disaster, required to decision-make regarding the patient’s on-going care and help local teams determine the priority of each for transfer to available regional burn beds.
The objective of the exercise, as explained by Mr Stian Kreken Almeland, Burns Surgeon and European Burns Association Vice President, was to “get the teams to be able to undertake a secondary assessment of burn patients and support decision making with local teams regarding onward care and transfer in a mass casualty situation.”
The teams each had three burn experts with extensive experience in burns care. In addition, the team comprised a coordination expert knowledgeable in the UCPM mechanism and with experience of co-ordination across a range of emergencies. With only a relatively small cohort of clinical and logistical burn expertise globally, these teams are essential in supporting the coordinated up-scaling of such expertise and burn care capacity during a European response.
“Personally, I liked how we kept our morale up. It was really good, and I learned a lot about how people (the teams) interact with everyone and that’s different per country.”
The next Burn Assessment Teams training courses will take place in The Netherlands on December 5th – 7th and March 27th – 29th 2023 inclusive. Registrations are open for the course in March 2023. Participants in this training are nominated by National Training Coordinators.
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