Quality indicators for hospital burn care: a scoping review

Abstract

Abstract Background Burn treatments are complex, and for this reason, a specialised multidisciplinary approach is recommended. Evaluating the quality of care provided to acute burn patients through quality indicators makes it possible to develop and implement measures aiming at better results. There is a lack of information on which indicators to evaluate care in burn patients. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify a list of quality indicators used to evaluate the quality of hospital care provided to acute burn patients and indicate possible aspects of care that do not have specific indicators in the literature. Method A comprehensive scoping review (PRISMA-ScR) was conducted in four databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Lilacs/VHL) between July 25 and 30, 2022 and redone on October 6, 2022. Potentially relevant articles were evaluated for eligibility. General data and the identified quality indicators were collected for each included article. Each indicator was classified as a structure, process, or outcome indicator. Results A total of 1548 studies were identified, 82 were included, and their reference lists were searched, adding 19 more publications. Thus, data were collected from 101 studies. This review identified eight structure quality indicators, 72 process indicators, and 19 outcome indicators listed and subdivided according to their objectives. Conclusion This study obtained a list of quality indicators already used to monitor and evaluate the hospital care of acute burn patients. These indicators may be useful for further research or implementation in quality improvement programs. Trial Registration Protocol was registered on the Open Science Framework platform on June 27, 2022 ( https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/NAW85 ).

Keywords

• Burns
• Quality indicators, health care
• Health care quality, access and evaluation
• Hospital care