Difficulties Experienced by Nurses Providing Care to Burn Patients in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Wards

<p> In order to elucidate the difficulties faced by nurses providing care to burn patients in the context of plastic and reconstructive surgery, we conducted focus group interviews (FGIs) covering this topic with nine nurses working in a plastic and reconstructive surgery ward and performed qualitative descriptive analysis on the responses. After extracting and summarizing from the FGI transcripts, there were 101 codes for difficulties. From these, 27 subcategories were generated based on similarities and differences, and seven major categories were generated. The categories were as follows: “difficulties in burn wound care under analgesia and sedation”, “concerns about transitional care for severely burned patients”, “difficulties in supporting self-care with burn wounds”, “difficulties in supporting the body image acceptance process”, “difficulties in providing mental health care based on the injury process”, “difficulties in supporting discharge considering the patient's environment”, and “difficulties in supporting family members involved in the injury”. The background of difficulties included the need for care that requires a variety of specialized knowledge, the need for discharge support interventions that take into account complex background factors (such as the patient's mental state and relationships with family members), and the patient's individuality. In order to solve these difficulties, the following measures were considered useful: increasing the amount of knowledge gained from burn nursing experience (such as case studies of difficult cases and providing opportunities to learn about patient conditions after discharge through collaboration with outpatient departments), strengthening multidisciplinary collaboration, and utilizing specialists and resource nurses in various fields.</p>