Primary Health Care professionals’ knowledge about initial care for burn victims

ABSTRACT Objectives: to assess Primary Health Care physicians and nurses’ knowledge about initial care for burn patients. Methods: a descriptive cross-sectional survey of 71 professionals between February 19 and March 30, 2018. A validated questionnaire was used to assess knowledge through the correct answers obtained in the tool; Mann-Whitney test to compare professionals’ level of knowledge; and logistic regression to investigate the association with other variables. Results: there was an overall wrong answer rate of 40.27% in a tool applied to the subject in relation to physicians and 45.59% of nurses, with no statistically significant difference among them (p=0.27). There was a positive association between level of knowledge and length of practice in Primary Health Care (p=0.043). 29.19% of physicians and 14.89% of nurses knew the Ministry of Health’s flowchart for initial care for burn victims. Conclusions: professionals had a low level of knowledge associated with their time in Primary Health Care.