Active Burn Rehabilitation Starts at Time of Injury: An Australian Perspective

I was disappointed not to be able to attend the recent Burns Rehabilitation Summit in San Antonio. Without that avenue for discussion, Richard et al's1 article in the May/June publication sparked me to pen the following comments regarding the issues of burn rehabilitation from an Australian physical therapist's perspective. First, I applaud the article as a “call to arms,” crying for a paradigm shift in burn therapist thinking. We must stop hiding behind our medical champions and take responsibility for the domain in which we have the expertise and skills to excel. I concur that one of the universal issues hindering improvement in burn rehabilitation is the lack of development of long-term experience and “forward thinking” clinical research programs. The issue is ascribed partially to the fact that it is difficult for therapists to specialize with the current structure of career and academic advancement opportunities. Therapists are a more transient population than our medical colleagues whose career structure lends itself to continued focus in one area and generally more flexible appointments across the clinical and academic environments. It is a difficult problem to unravel but I believe the solutions lie, in addition to the points presented in Table 1, in the development of postgraduate education opportunities for therapists with curricula strongly supportive of burn-specific clinical skills, research methodology, and scientific writing.