Objective: To examine the effects of the transitional tele-rehabilitation programme on quality of life of adult burn survivors.
Design: A prospective, single centre, randomised controlled trial and reported according to the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines.
Participants: Adult burn survivors aged ≥18 years with burn size ≥10% total body surface area irrespective of the depth was considered eligible to participate.
Intervention: The intervention was in two phases: pre-discharge and active follow-up phase (which occurred via WeChat). In both phases, comprehensive assessment and intervention guided by the Omaha System and evidenced-based protocols guided the care delivery over an 8-week period.
Main measures: The outcome of interest was quality of life. Two outcome measures were used to assess the outcome of interest: Burn Specific Health Scale-Brief (BSHS-B) and the EQ-5D-5L tools. The outcome was assessed at three time points: T0 (baseline), T1 (immediate post-intervention) and T2 (4 weeks from T1).
Results: In total, 60 adult burn survivors were randomly allocated to undergo the new programme. The transitional tele-rehabilitation programme elicited statistically significant improvement in simple abilities, affect, interpersonal relationship (T2) and overall quality life (T1 and T2) measured on the BSHS-B.
Conclusion: Ongoing rehabilitative care is essential to support the recovery process of burn survivors considering that some quality-of-life subscales may improve faster than others. The study findings highlight the potential of employing a social media platform to improve post-burn quality of life outcomes.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.govNCT04517721. Registered on 20 August 2020.
Keywords: Aftercare; Omaha System; burns; tele-rehabilitation; transitional care.