Influence of burn specific pain anxiety on pain experienced during wound care in adult outpatients with burns.

Burn pain is known as the most difficult type of pain to manage. In order to improve patient outcomes, nurses must be aware of burn pain and the conditions that affect it. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of burn-specific pain anxiety on pain experienced by adult outpatients with burns during burn wound care. This was a single-center, prospective, and descriptive study. The study was conducted with 60 adult outpatients with burns between March 2021 and April 2021 in a burn centers' outpatient service in Ankara. Personal information form, burn-specific pain anxiety scale, numerical rating scale, and verbal category scale were used for data collection. The mean age of the patients was 38.50 ± 14.27 years, and 53.33% patients were females. The primary cause of burns was home accidents (80%), and patients generally suffered from scalding-type burns (73.33%). This study demonstrated that the patients reported high pain anxiety associated with burns (59.85 ± 15.71), the mean pain score experienced during wound care was 6.33 ± 2.14 and the pain was primarily classified as disturbing (35%) based on the verbal category scale. In this study, it was found that burn-specific pain anxiety affects the pain experienced during burn wound care in adults receiving outpatient treatment. Hence, nurses should provide effective pain management to patients with burn injuries. In addition, the inclusion of anxiety-reducing practices in the care plans of such patients is recommended, and further studies are needed to identify and meet the care needs of patients with severe burns.