In low and middle income countries, burns pose a significant dander to children and adolescent groups with statistics indicating that up to 95% of burn victims within this group ultimately die from the effects. Apparently, the management of burns in this group has been limited to the period immediately after the burn incident with no continued physiotherapy programs for the victims. This paper seeks to focus on the PICOT question “For children and adolescents who are victims of burns, does continued physiotherapy until full growth and development as compared to standard care reduce the risk of scoliosis and future physical and physiological pain?” within the available context of literature.
Burns usually take two years to achieve complete healing as long as the treatment and management is continued over this course and time. The critical aspects is for continuing the physiotherapy over this period of time is to assure the patient of optimal functional results and ultimately help them cope with any physical or visible changes on skin without necessarily affecting their self-esteem or psychological state.
Reliability of a research is the aspect of the research methods to function in such a way that they provide the desired forms of data or information without causing any degradation to the same. The researchers utilized a cross-sectional design which apparently favors this study since the ultimate findings have to combine data from clinical records as well as interviews from the participants. The clinical records assure consistency and the retrieval of such data is easy. On the other hand, the interview questionnaires are designed to acquire or inquire the desired information from the study participants. The use of while the Shapiro-Wilk test further provided a formula on which data analysis would assure for the reliability of the collected data even across data analysis.
Validity of research can be described as the accuracy or precision of the interpretations acquired from the data collection tools or design methods utilized. The use of interviews for the participants ensured that the researcher takes control of the data collection process and only focuses on the relevant information. The primary data collected from the clinical records assures for precision. In the data analysis section, the GraphPad Prism® 6 statistical program was utilized across the required correlations.
Weaknesses:
The study sample of 21 participants was too small to offer findings that could be generalized for a larger population. Secondly, the six month outpatient care follow up on the participants is too short to provide the researchers with ample time to review and evaluate the importance of physiotherapy which should usually run for approximately two years.
For patients who have experienced burns especially in their formative days do carry an element of trauma in their adolescence as well as in their adulthood. These traumatic experiences if not managed appropriately especially at a professional level will continually haunt these patients. The period immediately after the burn is usually utilized as the healing process at the physical level (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2015). This period usually does not take into consideration the psychological and emotional experiences of the patient both as a result of the actual experience as well as the changed physical appearance of the victim (Elliott et al., 2015). In order to manage these emotional and psychological effects, which are usually slow to heal, the care team should develop a comprehensive two year follow-up plan for these patients to help them overcome the traumatic experiences and thus help them develop innate coping mechanisms (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2015).
Apparently, burns have an impact on the musculoskeletal functioning which could occur immediately or in the later stages. These effects tend to have an impact on the functioning of the individual and subsequently their quality of life of the patient (The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, 2015). On the other hand, the postural alterations do occur in the event of such burns and the care team should prioritize such to afford the patient holistic healing. It is only viable therefore that the care team works collaboratively to afford the patient physical and psychological recovery and restoration.
The Valenciano, Itakussu, Trelha & Fujisawa (2015) in their study indicate that for children and adolescents populations who have experienced burns require postural monitoring to afford them complete recovery as well as full growth and development. This then implies that within the context of the research question “For children and adolescents who are victims of burns, does continued physiotherapy until full growth and development as compared to standard care reduce the risk of scoliosis and future physical and physiological pain?” there is an apparent need for the care team to continue the physiotherapy for as long as the victims achieve optimal functionality at physical and psychological levels.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2015). National Guideline Clearinghouse | Guideline Matrix. Retrieved from http://www.guideline.gov/matrix.aspx
Elliott, T. R., Berry, J. W., Nguyen, H. M., Williamson, M. L., Kalpinski, R. J., Underhill, A. T., & Fine, P. R. (2015). Does participation mediate the prospective relationships of impairment, injury severity, and pain to quality of life following burn injury?. Journal of health psychology, 1359105315577686.
The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne. (2015). Clinical Practice Guidelines : Burns/Management of burn wounds. Retrieved from http://www.rch.org.au/clinicalguide/guideline_index/Burns/
Valenciano, P. J., Itakussu, E. Y., Trelha, C. S., & Fujisawa, D. S. (2015). Quantitative postural analysis and pain in children and adolescents victims of burns. Journal of Physical Therapy Science, 27(12), 3635-3640.
