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UC
The Case for Support |
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A serious burn can happen to anyone, anywhere, in a flash. This is the most painful of all medical emergencies. The scars are more visible, more alarming, than any other kind. For most of human history, a burn on more than 20 percent of the body meant certain death. The few survivors hid themselves from view. In the
last three decades the UC Davis Health System (UCDHS)
Among the dead was firefighter Gene LaVine and eight members of his family. For Gene’s colleagues in the Sacramento Fire Department, an already terrible day took on the kind of personal meaning that often inspires great things, especially among personalities already primed for action. A heightened awareness of their own, and their community’s, vulnerability galvanized Gene’s colleagues, particularly Cliff Haskell, a captain with the Department. Cliff convinced Sacramento Area Fire Fighters Local 522 to stand behind his drive for specialty burn care in the valley. Others quickly rallied around Cliff’s cause, and just a year after the plane crash, the not-for-profit Firefighters Pacific Burn Institute (now the Firefighters Burn Institute) came into being. Its purpose would be to support burn care, prevention and recovery, and to advocate for a dedicated burn unit at the University’s newest medical campus. The Sacramento Area Fire Fighters’ hard work and commitment led directly to the development of the UC Davis burn unit. To this
day the firefighters govern the Institute, serving as its Executive
Board. They raise most of the Institute’s funds themselves, through
grassroots campaigns, and they regularly contribute part of their own
salaries through payroll deductions. The dollars they raise go toward
equipment, research, patient education materials, and scholarships for
staff education at the UC Davis Burn Center. Several dozen other fire
departments throughout Northern California and As with any trauma, burn patients need care fast, starting right at the scene. Almost all Sacramento Area Fire Fighters are also certified as paramedics or emergency medical technicians, qualified to carry out a physician’s orders over the telephone during the life-saving Golden Hour. The UC Davis burn team trains them to assess the extent and depth of the injury, treat for shock, introduce intravenous fluids, and begin medicating for pain. Burn Center clinicians say they are only able to save as many lives as they do because of the skill and speed of their firefighting colleagues in the field. The same skill and speed continues at the hospital, where seriously burned patients are carefully monitored in a room kept at eighty-five degrees or warmer, with intravenous fluids and massive pain medication continuing for as long as necessary. If smoke inhalation has destroyed the lining of the lungs, there is life support. After three or four days, infection may set in, requiring antibiotics. A high-protein diet (perhaps 4,000 calories a day) speeds healing. Dressings need frequent changing. For the most serious cases, registered nursing is one on one. Working together as a team, specialty physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, and therapists leave nothing to chance. Multiple reconstructive surgeries may follow. Skin grafts, splints, amputations, physical therapy, and occupational therapy all contribute to survival and recovery. After discharge, and for burns not serious enough to require a hospital stay, the Center operates a clinic that sees more than 1,200 patients a year. Equally important for every patient is psychosocial support. A psychotherapist, social worker, discharge planner, case manager and outreach coordinator work together to provide this expertise. In addition, several burn survivors have volunteered to study communications skills, so they can better provide peer support to newcomers. Monthly support groups attract between 15 and 39 survivors and family members. The Firefighters Burn Institute’s annual retreat for burn survivors has been known to change lives. So too has the Institute’s Firefighters Kids Camp, run every summer by the firefighters themselves. Even
though most people will never need the Burn Center, this is one of Many years have passed since an entire American city burned, and houses are far less vulnerable than they once were, but people do still smoke in bed, and candles still catch curtains on fire. Children still touch the stove. Cooks still tip over hot kettles. The elderly sometimes confuse hot water faucets for cold. Workers fall into vats. Little boys play with matches. Teenage girls play with hairspray and cigarette lighters. Barbecues blow up. So do gas furnaces. Abandoned campfires smolder and spread. Cars, planes, and helicopters burst into flames when they crash. Firefighters still run into the smoke to do their duty. Today,
more than two million people count on the Burn Center for comprehensive
patient care, research, professional guidelines for improving care, and
prevention education in the community. This is the only program
of its kind between Such a busy program makes an ideal setting for research. By working near patients, laboratory scientists stay focused on practical needs. Clinicians work overtime to help bring promising ideas to the bedside—ways to reduce swelling and scarring, prevent burned muscle tissue from breaking down, improve patients’ appetites, and generally eliminate suffering and enhance healing. Work underway here on wound care is also showing potential for the care of chronic wounds unrelated to burns. In 1997,
the In 2002, the UC Davis Burn Center admitted 250 patients. Future years will bring continued growth, due partly to the valley’s prosperity and appeal, partly to the closure of several smaller burn units, and partly to the Center’s reputation for success, helped by improved surgical procedures, new medical technology, and the continued fine tuning of its holistic approach to care. Since the beginning, the Burn Center has occupied an eight-bed critical care unit on the fifth floor of the hospital’s main tower. In a decade, the patient load has doubled, without any expansion or renovation of space. The quality of care remains high, but with increasing difficulty. Patient volume is expected to grow steadily, toward a 40 percent increase by 2020, when the average census is expected to reach 12 patients a day. Space constraints in the inpatient burn unit have already found as many as nine patients at a time in general acute care units elsewhere on the medical center campus. These patients receive the same excellent medical care as those on the burn unit. However, their distance from the burn unit does delay their access to some of the burn unit's psychosocial and other support services. Nurses and physicians must walk far to see these patients, leaving less time at the bedside for questions and encouragement. Even outpatient services are inconveniently located, exposing patients and their loved ones to added stress from their search for multiple unfamiliar locations; support groups meet four floors away from the burn unit, and the outpatient clinic is in another building altogether. Now,
however, an extraordinary opportunity has arisen.
UCDHS is preparing to invest $300 million in facilities and
programs, including a new three-story Surgical and Emergency Services
Pavilion adjacent to the Although hospital reserves and state bonds will cover basic construction, only philanthropy can tailor the second floor to the Burn Center’s unique needs. The campaign for the new Burn Center will be a partnership between UC Davis and Sacramento Area Fire Fighters Local 522, through the Firefighters Burn Institute. You are invited to join the firefighters and UC Davis in this rare opportunity. Your support will allow UC Davis to consolidate all burn services into a single, efficient setting with twice the space—nearly 9,000 square feet, up from 4,500 today. Even the outpatient clinic will move into the new facility, promising continuity of care for every patient, all in one familiar location, with a single caring staff. Research too will benefit from the consolidation, in that a single location, with unified protocols, will simplify and enhance data collection for epidemiological studies. From 8 patient rooms, the unit will grow to 12, each large enough to hold the latest monitors, electronic record-keeping, a foldout visitor’s bed, and plenty of storage for gowns, gloves, and linens now kept on carts in the hall. In-room storage, and additional storage overall, will simplify infection control, the primary killer of burn patients. If you wish you may contribute to specific areas and amenities that enhance recovery. A shower will give recuperating patients the least painful way to slough away dead skin. An outmoded, bulky hydrotherapy tub will give way to a smaller, more comfortable one with a hydraulic lift, so nurses can bathe wounds more effectively, without getting down on hands and knees. A 35-seat conference room will accommodate support groups, staff meetings, and professional training classes right on site. A spacious waiting area will make family members more comfortable during long days and nights that sometimes stretch on for months. Four new outpatient exam rooms and a new treatment room for physical therapy and occupational therapy will help consolidate all burn services into this one location. For unstable patients vulnerable to infection, drafts, and chills, the new layout will mean a less traumatic experience at every stage of their care. As patient volume increases, the staff will expand by perhaps 50 percent. Such a fine new facility, made possible with your help, will attract the very best burn specialists and make the best possible use of their skills and time. Construction
is set to begin in July 2004, with completion by December 2007.
Planners estimate the cost of the entire pavilion at $282
million. To transform the second floor shell into a At the
time, the Firefighters
from throughout inland California consider the UC Davis Burn Center the
valley’s greatest asset, and they have pledged their full support to
the campaign. They know what a difference it will make in people’s
lives, possibly even their own. In 1997, a backyard grass fire left a young Auburn woman with burns over the entire top half of her body. A can of gasoline had exploded in her face. She spent two difficult months in the burn unit at UC Davis, undergoing every possible treatment and eventually becoming a regular at support group meetings. The scars will never go away, but she is fully healed, in every way, and she credits UC Davis for this rebirth. Where once her injured hands couldn’t even make a fist, today she works as a certified massage therapist, an expert in the techniques and moisturizers most suited to burn patients. They look to her as a mentor. Last summer she went white-water rafting down the Colorado River. She brought home lots of snapshots, including one of herself caught in mid-air as she jumped off a rock into the water, her scars naked to the world, her arms spread wide, embracing the sky. A Brownsville man was burned over ninety-five percent of his body when his dune buggy crashed in a race. He lost both arms and the features on his face, but the burn team at UC Davis still brought him through. Today he’s back at work as a lumber estimator, racing off-road trucks in his spare time. Not long ago, he came in first in the nation for his vehicle’s size category. Talk about victories! Turning victims into victors is more than a clever phrase. It’s what your gift to the UC Davis Burn Center is all about. Ours is one of only a handful of communities in the nation with a burn charity founded and still run, hands on, by firefighters. Our local firefighters were instrumental in creating the original Burn Center—they saw the need and stepped forward. Thirty years later, they are doing the same. Rescuers by nature, they know better than any of us when it’s time to act. Please join them in supporting the campaign for the new UC Davis Burn Center. They are asking for your help today. No one ever expects a serious burn. When it does happen, your gift will help our northern California community be prepared. |
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For information on how you can support our efforts, please contact: Patty Neifer, Executive
Director |
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© Firefighters Burn Institute Sacramento, CA www.ffburn.org |
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Something
happened 30 years ago that led directly to this transformation. On a
Sunday afternoon in September 1972, an F-86 Sabre jet spun out of
control at