APPLYING WHAT BURN SURVIVORS HAVE TO SAY TO FUTURE THERAPEUTIC INTERVENTIONS

Statements by caregivers can be beneficial to paediatric burn patients , facilitating their psychological adaptation. However, the concerns o f the burned child are not always obvious, and caregivers may flounder , not knowing how to elicit the concerns of the patients. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether universal concerns of the postburn survivor can be detected through one type of psychological assessment tool, a sentence completion task. Sixty paediatric burn survivors, ag es 6-19, were administered a 30-item Incomplete Sentences measure. Fiv e major aspects of postburn life were identified and proscribed the fo llowing descriptive labels: (1) preoccupation with health; (2) the str uggle for internal acceptance; (3) reconstruction of one's life map; ( 4) changing relationships; and (5) redefining the world. These five di mensions of postburn life are discussed, as well as applications for e ach. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd for ISBI.