DISCHARGED FROM CHILDREN'S SERVICES?
Transition Stories“I was ready for the next step in my burns care”
Will I need treatment in an adult burns service? Why do I have to move?
Not all children who have a burn injury will need to make the transition to an adult burns service. It may be that by the age of 16 your doctor feels that your treatment is complete and you are unlikely in the near future to need further specialist burns care.
However, it is not always possible to know who will and who will not require further treatment as an adult. Because of this, all children aged 14 years and upwards who are treated for a burn injury in children’s services will be given information about their local adult burns service, just in case they need it at a later date. Information about the different services can also be found under the ‘Your Services’ heading on this webpage.
What if I am discharged from children’s services? How do I get referred back in?
Many children are discharged from the children’s burns service, rather than making the transition to adult services. Sometime they find however that they have a worry or concern about their burns at a later stage. This might be because some skin starts to feel tight and movement becomes restricted so you want to explore the possibility of more surgery, or a healed wound starts to become irritated and breaks down again. It may even be because you need some specific advice about physiotherapy, or that you are not feeling good about your injury and would like to see the specialist burns psychologist. Whichever member of the burns team you feel it would be helpful to see, if it is an issue related to your burn, you can be referred back into the burns service for treatment and advice at any point.
You can be referred back into either child services (if you are under 16 years), or to adult services (if you are 16 years and over), by making an appointment with your GP and asking him to make a referral for you to your local service.