Being treated at specialist burns services

This section covers:

  • Being sent to specialist burns services
  • Stays and visits to specialist burns facilities
  • Disruption to daily life, including being a parent
  • Relocating to be nearer to specialist burns services

When someone has a burn and requires treatment, they may need to go to a hospital which offers specialist burns care. Minor burns may be dealt with at a GP surgery or Accident and Emergency. For more complex burns, especially if the burn is quite serious or the person injured is vulnerable, hospital treatment may be required. Burn care in the U.K. is split into three tiers: burns facilities, burns units, and burns centres. Burns facilities are part of local plastic surgery services and can treat smaller burns. Burns units are regional and can treat people who require a hospital admission. Burns centres have more intensive and advanced treatment facilities and will cover a larger geographical area.

Compared to other hospitals, the specialist burns facility Frazer went to was “better equipped”, and Tom described there being specialist support at the burns unit he was at, like physiotherapy and psychotherapy.

Many people found that the specialist burns services were quite a distance from their home, which could be challenging both practically and mentally.

Being sent to specialist burns services

Gary and Helen Y each explained how, after arriving at their local hospitals by ambulance, they were immediately transferred to a specialist burns service at another hospital. When Helen Y arrived, the staff at her local hospital phoned two specialist burns hospitals to see if they had a bed available.

Helen Y was taken to a local hospital after she burnt herself during an epileptic seizure.

Interviewer: Do you remember the trip to hospital at all?

Yeah, I do, very much so actually. Generally, my memory after a seizure is pretty rubbish. I have conversations where apparently, I’m talking normally, so I think I am aware when I’m having the conversations but afterwards, I have no memory of those sensible conversations. So, my memory is, you know, buggered for about half an hour afterwards. But that particular journey – I don’t know how long after the seizure it was – I do remember. I was taken – once again, can I say they were really lovely to me – and the first thing they did was… So, I went in the van ambulance to the very nearest hospital, which is probably only a five minute drive away. They checked me there and then they sent me off to a hospital, which has a specialist burns unit, so that same evening. So, I was probably, from the seizure to being in the burns unit of the specialist hospital probably took maybe… 45 minutes, an hour, something like that… Maybe not that long. I don’t know. Between 40 minutes and an hour, I would say.

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On the recommendation of his sister-law, Chris X gave his daughter Calpol (paracetamol) and drove her to a children’s burn unit. He was grateful for the advice to give pain relief as “that would have been really bad if she was still screaming in the back of the car seat and I had to drive 40 minutes and trying to drive sensibly”.

Sabrina and Jasmine had both been on holiday when the burn injury happened; this meant treatment at one hospital near where they were staying and then their treatment was transferred to a hospital closer to home.

Some people we spoke to told us that, after receiving initial treatment at a local hospital, they had to attend follow-up appointments at specialist burns services. Abi and Holly both recalled how their child’s burns were cleaned and dressed at a hospital near to them, then the next day they travelled to a hospital further way for more specialised burns treatment.

The local hospital would only clean and dress Abi’s son’s burn. They told her she needed to visit a hospital with specialist burns service for further treatment.

He was treated as an outpatient at first, in Casualty of the hospital, he was basically just bandaged to keep it clean and less risk of infection. But the hospital that he was sent to in the ambulance, other than to dress it and to keep it clean and safe, they would not treat him because they weren’t a specialist burns unit and, obviously, especially with his age, they would only be willing to get it covered and comfortable and give him pain relief and then they sent him to a different hospital. But that was actually the next day, so we basically took him home from Casualty mummified and then I remember the next day we had to travel all the way to this other hospital that was specialised in it. And, from then, it was sort of all different types of bandages.

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For some, like Lindsay, needing to be seen at a specialist burns service made them worry about the severity of the burn.

When Lindsay was told that her daughter, Niamh, needed treatment at a children’s burns unit, it made her realise the severity of the burn.

So the next day on the Tuesday, I took her, popped her down to A&E, children’s A&E, at our local hospital and just asked the question really, because there was no pain and she said that-, the nurse there saw her, lovely lady, and said that they’re going to contact a slightly bigger hospital, children’s hospital – the burn’s centre – and speak with them. And she said "Oh, I don’t think it’ll be a problem at all" and I was like "Yeah, not a problem, I was just wanting to get it checked." And she come back and said "Actually, they want to see you. You need to go down tomorrow." And I was like ‘Whoa, ok.’ So, we made the trip, sort of half hour trip the next day, to go.

It’s the first time that, in the lives of all three of my children, that we’ve ended up at a children’s hospital and our local hospital, which is about a half hour away from here, that’s a big hospital. So, when you go in and get told by them that you’ve got to go to the children’s burn unit, you think ‘Oh Lord!’ and that, yeah, I mean I wasn’t like ‘Oh my God!’ or anything but it’s just like ‘Mm, I thought this wasn’t great.’ You know, 'I was right to take her, I was right to be nervous of this burn'.

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Stays and visits to specialist burns facilities

Some people we talked to had been inpatients, meaning they had stayed in hospital for specialist burns care for a few days or weeks. Often, they continued attending appointments there after being discharged. Others had attended specialist burns services for appointments only, as outpatients.

Lindsay felt quite nervous about the first journey with her daughter, Niamh, to the specialist burns services.

I’m not somebody that uses trains so… and it was just her and I, and was very nervous about going there and being judged in the first place. I was nervous about getting there, I was nervous about being late and missing it. Was I going to get the right platform? Was I going to get off in the right place? All those things were on my mind. So, yeah, the second time, we knew what we were doing, we knew roughly where we were going and we knew the plan of the day, kind of thing, and then to chuck a couple of nice things in there as well was just a nicer experience.

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Claire, who was burnt as a child, stayed in hospital for 10 weeks. Sabrina was in two different hospitals with specialist burn care for a total of four weeks. After a stay in hospital, Jessica’s daughter had to return daily for over a week for intravenous antibiotics because of an infection. For Chris X, whose child was burnt, there was only one visit to a specialist burns service for roughly 2–3 hours.

Frazer had started a new job shortly before he was burnt. He found having to take time off work for appointments and being unable to drive to work to be frustrating.

It was quite a nasty ordeal. And having, you know, time off work, I just started a new job, maybe a month into a new job so the time of work for that, and it was quite a frustrating ordeal, and also not being able to do anything. As I say, I always like doing things. I’ve always got something to do, I've alwasy got something in my hands. I just couldn't sit still, and it was so frustrating not being able to do anything.

Because the specialist burns place was a bit about, maybe half hour out for us, so the whole having to drive there and work it around work obviously, I couldn't ride there at all. And I think that was probably one of the worst bit is although, I had the bike and stuff like that, I could no longer work, like, I could no longer ride, nothing in the whole recovery process.

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When someone needs specialised burn care, they may have to travel long distances to a hospital that provides it. Abi had to travel 40 minutes each way, every day for six days, to take her son to appointments. She couldn’t commit to anything or plan ahead and, with the cost of petrol, she found it “tight” financially. She recalled that it was “just exhausting for all of us, emotionally and physically”.

When Claire was burnt as a child, she remembers her mum having to travel back and forth to the specialist burns unit every day for 10 weeks. Claire says this was a “nightmare” for her mum because the journey was two hours each way.

For parents, having to juggle caregiving responsibilities can cause additional distress. Sometimes a child will need to stay at the hospital and this can be difficult if the hospital is a long distance from home. It can also be difficult to arrange additional childcare if there are other children at home, as Claire’s mum had found with Claire’s sibling.

Jessica was worried about how her twin daughters would cope being separated when one of them was burnt and needed to stay in hospital.

It sounds like it was a very uncertain time and the fact that the hospital was an hour away, what was that like for you, the journey there?

It made the whole thing worse in the fact that she is an identical twin, because I had to take her away from her other twin. It’s the first time that they’d ever been separated, so that was quite difficult and because I felt very guilty about the whole situation and, obviously, splitting them was very difficult. I wondered how they would manage without each other. They’d never spent any time apart at all. But actually, they were both fine but, obviously worried when you don’t know how things are going to be and the hospital being an hour away was quite difficult in terms of my husband and my other children being able to visit, although they did come and see us every day after school.

How long did your daughter stay in hospital for?

I think that we were initially in for two days, but they just have to get you sort of settled, get the burns dressed and everything and get you to a point where they can then send you home. I think it was two days, but we were only home for less than 12 hours when I realised that something wasn’t right with her. So, then we had to make the decision about who was going to take her back, what we were going to do, again because we had to go back to the hospital that was an hour away. But we found it was better that, even though I was tired, that I took her still, because we thought I’d have to stay longer, and also, because I had to go in the night, I had to leave my children again and, obviously, they didn’t know where we had gone when they woke up.

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After Jeff was burnt during an accident at work, he was an inpatient in a hospital with specialist burns services for a week. His wife couldn’t visit him because the hospital was too far away from their home and she had to look after their daughter.

Relocating to be nearer to specialist burns services

In cases where a child had been burnt and a parent needed to stay with them whilst they were receiving treatment, some families moved closer to the hospital. This could mean spending time away from their homes and families whilst they stayed with their injured child in hospital.

When Saffron was burnt as a child, her family temporarily relocated to be closer to the hospital as her Mum was pregnant.

I have some memories of being in hospital. They’re quite faint. I more remember, in terms of actually the incident, I think I recall a story that I’ve been told, and I don’t really have clear memories from that specific time but, you know, I know that it was a very stressful time, especially for my family. So the nearest hospital with a burns unit was about an hour away from us, so we all moved up there. We were given somewhere to stay by the hospital, which was very good of them but, obviously, that enabled us to all be together in terms of my family. My mum was also seven months pregnant, so my younger brother was born in hospital as well, where we were staying.

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When Sinead’s daughter, Elizabeth, sustained burns to 60% of her body in a fire, they had to move to the UK to access specialist help to treat severe burn injuries. For Sinead’s parents, this meant being apart from their other children.

Sinead and her family had to travel from the Middle East to the U.K. to receive specialist burns treatment for Elizabeth.

Immediately after arriving in the hospital, we were told that she couldn’t be treated there and were we told to try and get her out of the country as quick as possible. It took five days for her to be flown to the U.K. On day six we came to where we currently live and she’s been treated there ever since. She was in a medically induced coma from the initial injury, and she remained in a coma for about eight/nine weeks, I believe, and then spent about another three months in the high dependency burns centre in the hospital, and she’s been treated there ever since.

There’s nothing more frightening I think that your child being brought to a hospital and then being told that they can’t treat her. That was probably the initial panic and upset is, you know, you feel like you’ve got them in a safe place and then somebody tells you ‘Well, actually we can’t look after a child with an injury this severe.’ So, for those five/six days it was panic, it was just trying desperately hard to get her to a country – any country – that could treat her injury. Yeah, very, very frightening. Very, very frightening and then, when you get that call to say there is a bed available in the UK, it was, you know, the relief because she’d been actually given a chance to survive. Up to that point, it was just keeping her alive with no chance of survival, but when you get that call to say you can come, you know, at least we felt like we were giving her the best possible chance.

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Sinead found it difficult to explain to her other children why she and her daughter Elizabeth needed to stay at a hospital in another country.

I think it’s always, you know, worry for other children. And my parents and sister, who they were living with at the time, because they gave up their life to care for our children. But I think it was the hardest-, because our other children were so young that it was the hardest part was, I suppose, for them asking questions, especially our oldest one at the time because he was only I think he was six and kind of saying ‘Well, why do you and daddy have to be with Elizabeth but we’ve got nobody?’. And that was really, really difficult because, trying to explain that to, like, a just-gone six-year-old, you know, that she’s really ill and she needs both of us, and he was like ‘But we need you too.’ So, it’s-, the other two were probably too small really to kind of understand. But that was, you know, that obviously breaks your heart as a parent because you’re torn between this and that and you feel like you can’t please anybody and you’re making everybody upset, including yourself. So, that was probably the hardest part, you know, the living in temporary accommodation or, you know, running back and forth to hospital. It’s, you know, as hard as it is, I think when you’ve got other children and you’re torn between everybody that was probably the most heart-breaking part of everything. And the guilt probably.

What was the guilt like?

Well guilt is awful and it’s the worst as a mother anyway. You know, I’d ring up every day to speak to them, to Facetime them, whatever, and they wouldn’t want to speak to me, especially the older one because, obviously, he understood a little-, a tiny little bit more than the other two but yeah, it’s just like that guilt coming away from the phone or video and, you know like your heart is aching because you’ve got, like, nobody and you want to please everyone but you’re pleasing nobody and it’s yeah, the guilt is horrible. And then questioning yourself as well, ‘Well, maybe one of us should be with them and one of us should be here.’ You just literally are torn between everything and everyone.

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You can read more here about the impact of a burn on relationships with family and friends.

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