Emergency Management of Severe Burns (EMSB) Course

Start date and time

Thursday 27 November 2025

Location

Simulation and Clinical Skills Centre Edinburgh Napier University

The patient with burns presents a difficult challenge to most health care personnel. Apart from the serious nature of the injury, there is the patient’s discomfort, the distress of the patient and their relatives, the loss of income and the compromise of their employment future, and their uncertainty about the future. In addition to these factors, the well-known surgical maxim that the trauma patient who is seen, assessed and treated early by skilled personnel heals more quickly than the patient whose treatment is delayed, is as true for the burn victim as it is for any other trauma patient.

This course is based on the principle that timely emergency assessment, resuscitation and transfer provide the best chance of recovery in our patients with burns. Ultimately, the patient that we will be called upon to manage with burns, and perhaps with associated severe injuries, should benefit from this course.

The aim of this course is to provide sufficient factual information regarding the presentation, diagnosis and initial management of the patient with severe burns, to enable medical and nursing practitioners to deal competently with this urgent and often life threatening problem.

This course was written by members of the Association’s Education Committee, each individual chapter being written from members’ personal (and considerable) experience in different areas of burn care. All the contained material is original material that has not been published in this form before.

EMSB Faculty