We have now identified the Top 10 Priorities in Global Burns Research.
We did this by following the James Lind Alliance methods, which puts survivors and carers at the centre of the process.
We gathered uncertainties in Survey 1, which was completed by 1617 people from 79 countries. Burn survivors, carers and healthcare professionals told us about their experiences of burns care and what was most important to them. Next, we analysed all of the responses and turned them into 52 priority questions, and we examined the existing evidence to make sure that none of these questions had already been answered by research. We prioritised these question in Survey 2, where 630 people from 67 countries picked the ten questions most important to them. We used this data to select the 19 questions to be discussed at the final priority setting workshop. This workshop was held online and attended by 28 people from 15 countries. After lots of discussion over two days we selected the final Top 10. You can read more about the Top 10 here.
We have made all of the survey data available in the University of Bristol Research Data Repository. If you are a researcher, you can access the data to do secondary analysis. If you are a healthcare professional or someone involved in burns care and support, you can access the data to find out more about what’s important to survivors, carers and healthcare professionals in different settings and different countries. For example, you might want to look survivor’s experiences of wound dressing changes in your country compared to another setting. You can access all the data here
Why is this important?
Burn injuries affect 11 million people world-wide and 140,000 patients in England each year. Around 70% of burns happen in the lower income countries such as in Africa and South-East Asia. Many patients with burns have difficulties which affect their daily lives, such as walking, dressing, poor mental health and the challenges of living with scars. Burn care can be expensive when it involves operations, long hospital stays, and scar treatment. Despite the importance of these issues, there is limited research evidence available to inform hospital staff how to make treatment decisions. Without strong evidence, staff can use their own preferences and may do what they have always done. This limits progress, results in care that varies between hospitals, and means patients may not get the best results.
To get the best evidence for clinicians to make decisions, we need to make sure research studies ask the most important questions. To find this out, we needed to know which unanswered questions patients and healthcare professionals think are the most important and will most improve recovery. Now that we’ve found the Top 10 we want to make sure that they reach as many people as possible to make sure that future research focusses on what we now know is most important.