The survey is now closed.

You can read more about the project below.

Further information

We are carrying out this project to try to discover the top ten research priorities for global burns care. We want to give a louder voice to patients, carers and clinicians in research. We would like to invite you to take part in this survey, which will help us find out what burns care research should focus on.

What is a ‘research priority’?

A research priority is a question, concern, interest, or uncertainty you have about any aspect of burns care and treatment that has not already been answered by research which you think is important. Over 1600 burns survivors, their carers, and burns health care professionals from 79 countries have told us what is most important to them about burns treatment. We’ve used that information to make a long list of questions that research can focus on. Now we need your help to find out which of these questions will be the final top 10 most important questions for research.

By finding out what areas of research are a priority to you we can use the funding for burn research in the best way.

Why have I been invited to participate?

We want to hear from you if you are:

A patient or survivor of a thermal burn (a burn caused by heat or flame, contact or scalds, not burns caused by electricity or chemicals)
The carer of a patient or survivor of a thermal burn (a burn caused by heat or flame, contact or scalds not burns caused by electricity or chemicals)
A healthcare professional involved in any aspect of thermal burns care and treatment

Before you decide whether to take part, we would like you to read the following information. You can talk to other people about it before you decide, and if you have any questions, we are happy to discuss these with you.

What is this survey for?

Our aim is to understand patient and clinicians’ views and questions about burns treatment. Understanding these views and questions will help us to identify what research needs to be done to improve burns treatment. Your views and opinions will help us identify these research priorities. Your first-hand experience in these matters will help us understand the top priorities for research into burns care. Potential priorities could be:

Do I have to take part?

Taking part in the survey is entirely voluntary and your answers will be anonymous and confidential. This means that we won’t be able to identify you from your responses.

What will happen to me if I take part and what will I have to do?

If you choose to take part, we will ask you to complete a short online survey. You will be asked some basic questions about yourself, such as location, age and gender. If you are a burns healthcare professional, we will ask you what your clinical role is. You will then be asked to pick ten questions from a longer list of questions. We want to know which ten questions are most important to you.

We do not anticipate there being any disadvantages or benefits involved in you taking part in this project, although contributing to this project will benefit patients in focussing research on the most important areas of burn care.

Because your responses to the survey are completely anonymous, we will not be able to identify your data if you later wish to withdraw it from the project. Therefore, it will not be possible to withdraw your data after you have submitted the survey.

Will my participation in this project be kept confidential?

Your involvement in this survey will be anonymous and kept confidential. This means no one will know you’ve taken part unless you tell them. Data collected from the survey will be stored securely and confidentially and only members of the research team will be able to access it.

At the end of the project, the anonymous survey response data will be made available as ‘open data’, which means that it will be stored in a publicly accessible database hosted by the University of Bristol. It will not be possible to identify you from this data.

What will happen to the results of the research project?

The results of this project will inform future research for global burns care, and make sure the questions being researched are important to patients, carers and healthcare providers. We will publish our results in research journals and we will present our findings at meetings and conferences. When we publish our findings we may use some direct quotations from people’s survey responses, but no one will be able to identify who the quote has come from. The anonymised data will be made available as ‘open data’ in a publicly accessible database and may be used for purposes unrelated to this project. It will not be possible to identify you from this data.

We will share the results of this project with our global partners in burns care and support by social media, email and newsletters. You should be able to find out about our results in the same place you found out about this survey.

Who is organising, funding and reviewing the research?

This project has been funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and is led by the University of Bristol and the James Lind Alliance. The NIHR and the University of Bristol Faculty of Health Sciences Research Ethics Committee has reviewed this project.

Further information and contact details

If you would like further information about the project you can read about it at our website:

https://burnsresearch.bristol.ac.uk/

You can follow us or contact us on social media: @burnspriorities

Or you can email the research team at hollie.richards@bristol.ac.uk

If you have any concerns about your participation in this project, you can contact the Faculty of Health Science Research Ethics Committee, via the Research Governance Team, research-governance@bristol.ac.uk