LSU Health New Orleans Awarded $4.6m to Help Develop Burn Care Education & Training for Military and Civilian Disasters

The Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium, in collaboration with the US Army Medical Research and Development Command, has awarded LSU Health New Orleans $4.6 million over four years to develop education and training to improve burn injury care in military conflicts and civilian disasters before the patients reach a hospital. The Burn Prehospital Provider Program will meet the needs of military and civilian health care providers in different environments, with different levels of experience, in different roles and with new technological tools. It will serve as a learning platform to teach and address four essential skills of the prehospital provider—burn wound decontamination, burn wound debridement, burn wound dressing application, and assessing and/or performing a surgical procedure to relieve pressure that could result in circulation issues and damage or death of tissue. Each learning module will comprise a brief content presentation followed by scenario-based learning and assessment. The mobile learning modules will incorporate hands-on burn procedure skills training using biometric tabletop simulators.

Under the leadership of Dr. Jeffrey Carter, Professor of Surgery at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, and Director of the Burn Center at University Medical Center, LSU Health New Orleans is one of six members of a consortium of subject matter experts, including burn care practice, bur care research and burn care education specialists tapped for the project.

"This award was designed to advance military and civilians knowledge and skills when providing burn care in the field," principal investigator Dr. Carter says. "We plan to work closely with our collaborators at the Institute for Surgical Research, Wake Forest University, and the American Burn Association over the next four years."

Phase 1 will deliver a well-informed and focused burn education needs assessment study with a list of specific learning objective targets to deliver required clinical knowledge and psychomotor skills. A multi-component burn simulator prototype will be designed and fabricated to meet training needs. The synthetic component parts will use materials that not only replicate the appearance of human tissue but will also replicate the expected normal tissue response to burn care interventions.

Phase 2 will focus on technology development, curriculum integration and beta-testing—both prototype tabletop burn simulators and the software application for interactive practice-based burn care simulation scenarios.

Phase 3 is the curriculum implementation and research phase. Technology resources and equipment, including the simulators with replaceable procedure cartridges, as well as mobile tablets and the respective interactive software applications developed, will be distributed to key stakeholder training sites. Results of learning outcome assessments will be reported.

During Phase 4, consortium members, including LSU Health New Orleans, will partner with each training site to prepare a propagation and scalability plan that defines the requirements and the pathway to expand the implementation of the Burn Prehospital Provider Program curriculum for broad utilization to extend training to all military burn care practitioners. In addition, in partnership with the American Burn Association (ABA), a pilot study will be completed to create civilian derivatives of the Program curriculum content and teaching/testing methods. These will be applied to meet the specific needs of civilian practitioners.

Dr. Carter was part of a team of burn surgeons who recently traveled to Ukraine to treat burn injuries in both soldiers and civilians.

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"My experience in Ukraine increased my awareness of how important prehospital burn care is during a disaster," adds Dr. Carter.

"The expertise of LSU Health New Orleans faculty will help close a gap in burn injury care that will benefit both soldiers in military conflicts and citizens affected by disasters," notes Dr. Steve Nelson, LSU Health New Orleans Interim Chancellor. "We are proud to serve, along with our University Medical Center partner, as a vital resource for this critically needed project."

Provided by Louisiana State University