Principal Investigators: LTC Montalvo, U. S. Army Nurse Corps, United States Army Institute of Surgical Research, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Co-Investigator Dr Linda Yoder

PURPOSE / AIMS:

The purpose of this TATRC-funded, prospective, descriptive, repeated measures study was to provide telemedicine technology to researchers and discharged burn patients in order to investigate the long-term outcomes of burn patients treated at the US Army Institute of Surgical Research (USAISR). This study added a telemedicine component to an ongoing research study, funded by the Department of Defense TriService Nursing Research Program N99-025. The research questions for this study were: 1) What are the changes in burn patients' perceptions of quality of life (physical, psychological, interpersonal relationships, and economic status) within 18 months after discharge from the burn center?; 2) What components of quality of life are rated as most important by burn patients at various points in time? 3) What are the relationships between demographic/clinical factors, such as age, burn severity, burn location, and quality of life?; and 4) What is the burn-related healthcare utilization (over 18 months) for burn patients after acute treatment in the USAISR? This project provided the foundation for an outcomes-based rehabilitation program for burn survivors treated in the USAISR. Additional questions added to the ongoing study focused on insertion of telemedicine technology for patient assessment and data collection. Discharged burn patients took a telemedicine system home with them, allowing burn researchers to follow patients even after discharge, regardless of location. The additional research questions for the telemedicine arm of the study were 1) Will the use of telemedicine technology allow enhanced communications and data collection for researchers? 2) What is the patients' perception of the use of telemedicine technology? The insertion of telemedicine technology in this ongoing research protocol successfully enhanced data collection activities and provided a mechanism whereby physical assessment data was collected remotely from discharged burn patients.