Background

What are patient reported outcome measures (i.e. PROMs)?

PROMs are standardised questionnaires that patients complete in order to report the status of their health. PROMs ensure that patients’ views are included in the assessment of services, research and treatment decision-making. They have been through rigorous testing where their reliability and validity has been verified with the population that they are intended for. This ensures that PROMs are effective at measuring the aspects of health that they aim to capture.

Which PROMs are used in burns?

We have conducted 2 systematic reviews of PROMs used in burns research with adults, and children or young people.

A systematic review of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) used in adult burn research.
A systematic review of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) used in child and adolescent burn research.

These reviews concluded that a variety of PROMs have been used with burns patients in the past. However most of these were not specific to the needs of people with burns, none had been developed in the UK, many had not been developed with input of people whose lives have been affected by burn injuries and the extent to which they had been appropriately tested varied considerably.

Therefore the reviews demonstrated that there was a need for burn-specific PROMs to be developed in collaboration with people affected by burn injuries for use in the UK.

Why are PROMs needed in burns?

Each year around 250,000 people in the UK suffer a burn injury (National Burn Care Review, 2001). A burn injury of any size can have a significant psychological and social impact and can result in a number of ongoing challenges for those affected, including pain, trauma, anxiety about social situations, and appearance-related concerns (Lawrence, et al, 2012).

It is important for health care professionals and researchers working with burns patients and their families to have a clear understanding of how their lives have been affected by the injury and any resulting scarring. PROMs can help health professionals and researchers to become aware of patients’ needs and therapeutic progress.

However, collecting PROM data has not been standard practice in the NHS Burns Service so, in 2013, the National Burn Care Standards recommended the development of new burns-specific PROMs

Using the CARe Burn Scales

The CARe Burn Scales can be used in clinical or research practice in order to identify health
support needs and therapeutic progress for patients and family members affected
by a burn injury. We encourage health professionals to use the full scales with
their patients/clients, however subscales can also be used individually.

No changes to the questions within each scale is permitted. This includes changes to the
text or the response categories.

The scales can be accessed by clicking on the link related to each scale. Instructions on
how to score each scale can also be downloaded from each scale section.

If you publish your research using our scales, please let us know so we can keep a
record of publications relating to the CARe Burn Scales.