Effect of Psychiatric Liaison Nurse Specialist Consultation On The Care Of Burns Patients

Severe burn injury may affect the victim both physical and psychologically .Liaison
psychiatry could be of major help to these patients .This study was a quasi- experimental one,
aimed at developing a liaison psychiatric nursing intervention for psychosocial adjustment of
patients with burns. This study was conducted at the outpatient clinic of burns at El-Demerdash
Hospital. The study involved 50 patients, divided into two groups of 25 patients each. Tools of
the study involved an interview questionnaire to assess socio demographic characteristics,
description of the burn injury and the details of the incident, questions about care giving and
whether the patient was caring for him/herself, coping with burns questionnaire (CBQ), these
tools were used before and after implementation of the intervention program. The main result
showed that, Multivariate analysis revealed that patient's baseline score of coping, age, and burn
surface area were the statistically significant independent predictors of the post- intervention
coping score, as for stress, it had statistically significant positive correlations with burn grade,
surface area and hospital stay both pre-post intervention phases, at the post intervention phase
there were statistically significant moderate to strong negative correlations between the total
coping score and all of the domains stress. This study recommended that orientation programs
should be carried out in order to increase role of liaison psychiatric nurse towards patients with
burn. There is a need further research to assess the effect of liaison psychiatric nurse on the long
–term psychosocial suffering of patients with burn.