Use of Healthcare, Perceived Health and Patient Satisfaction in Patients with Burns

Abstract: A severe burn is a trauma fraught with stress and pain and may change the entire course of life. This thesis focuses on care utilisation, care experiences and patient satisfaction after a severe burn.The patients studied were treated at the Burn Unit at Uppsala University Hospital between 1980 and 2006. Burn-related health was examined using the Burn Specific Health Scale-Brief (BSHS-B), personality traits with the Swedish universities Scales of Personality (SSP), psychological symptoms using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS), symptoms of posttraumatic stress with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and satisfaction with care using the Patient Satisfaction-Results and Quality (PS-RESKVA) questionnaire.Those utilising care years after injury reported poorer functioning on three of the BSHS-B subscales. Personality traits had a greater impact on care utilisation than injury severity.Social desirability was lower among care utilisers and was associated with burn-related health aspects.The participants reported a low level of negative care experiences, the most common of which was Powerlessness.Most patients were satisfied with care, more with quality of contact with the nursing staff, and less with treatment information. Multiple regressions showed that the BSHS-B Interpersonal relationships subscale was an independent variable related to all measured aspects of patient satisfaction. The highest adjusted R2 was 0.25.In a prospective assessment with multiple regression analyses, Age and Education, the personality traits of Stress susceptibility, Trait irritability, Detachment and Social desirability, in addition to the post-traumatic stress symptoms Intrusion and Hyperarousal, were predictors of satisfaction with care. The highest adjusted R2 was 0.19.The thesis has pointed out that interpersonal factors are related to care utilisation as well as satisfaction with care. However, satisfaction with care was only moderately associated with health and individual characteristics, which may imply that the care itself is of major importance.