Fire is not our friend!

So, on Tuesday of this week, I spent the day at a Burn Center, not far from where I live. The nurse educator had come to our school the week before to talk about burns and the nursing treatment of them, what happens when they come in to the ER, how the skin is affected, etc. She was really good so I was looking forward to visiting and spending the day there. Even if I had to be up at the crack of dawn.

The majority of the day was spent in the "Tank Room" where hydrotherapy was done for various patients. The patient is put onto a bed similar to this one:

They are fully wrapped in white gauze and cloths to prevent infection. Infection is a HUGE problem for burn victims so everyone is in full protection: gown, gloves, mask and head covering. We (another fellow nursing student and I) didn't have to wear gloves but we did have on a gown and head covering. Once, we also put on a mask when we got close enough to a patient.

So, the patient is brought in (or in the case of a 9 y/o patient, walked in) on the bed and is stripped of all the dressings. This allows the nurse and doctors to see the burns and how they are healing. It can be very painful for the patients so they are usually medicated. This is also the time that they are washed down and cleaned. One of the patients was a 9 year old kid who was burned all on his abdomen and on his back and arms. We weren't quite sure how he was burned so the tech that was washing him, asked him and I believe he was reaching over a candle and his shirt caught on fire. He was so young at 9 but some of the youngest I heard about were 2 and 6 days old! The only thing you should be doing is eating, sleeping and pooping at that age, not getting burned! But, apparently hot formula and loose caps on bottles don't go together.

There was another patient who hadn't even been there for 24 hours -- a firefighter who came in the previous afternoon. He was sooo badly burned. Even his face was burned. Eyelids, back, butt, thighs, legs, fingers. His face was so swollen. One of the biggest problems with burns is the massive fluid loss. As a consequence, one of the first symptoms of a burn is decreased blood volume leading to hypoperfusion or shock. So, the most important immediate treatment is for shock. Fluids will be administered and for this guy, there were liters and liters of fluid given to him. They weigh the patients every day and not even 24 hours later, when they weighed him, he weighed 50 lbs more! When they were done with him, there were bits of skin that were peeling from him on the floor.

The burn unit was definitely interesting but not so sure if I would be interested in working there. Here are some pics of other burn patients: