Standards and recommendations for burns care in mass casualty incidents

Caring for burns patients from the incident scene to definitive treatment can be a complex, resource-consuming process with the potential to overwhelm health system capacity.This document provides practical guidance for building capacity and capability for burns care from clinical, human resources and operational perspectives. It is therefore recommended that guidance in this document be applied to any contexts in which the local health system might struggle to cope and require surge support.

The objective is to ensure the establishment and enhancement of specialist burn EMTs and surge capacities that are ready and able to deliver timely, effective and high-quality burns care in response to mass burn incidents, ultimately saving lives and alleviating suffering.