The survival rate of patients with severe burns has increased enormously the last decades. The success of burn care is not only dependent of the survival rate. Burn survivors desire to get their pre-accident life back; that they can participate in society again with a good quality of life. However, quality of life is highly dependent of their ability to deal with the physical, emotional and social challenges in life after burns, and their ability to be in charge of their own life. This can be referred to as self-management. To support burn survivors in dealing with these challenges, the aftercare should not only be focused on the (treatment of) scars, but on all challenges burn survivors experience. In addition, health professionals should change their implicit and explicit behavior from problem solving to coaching burn survivors in how to deal with all the challenges. There is, however, no tailored self-management support intervention for burn survivors available yet.
We developed a self-management support program for burn survivors called BreeZe. The aim of BreeZe is to improve burn survivors’ self-management skills, by enhancing the self-management support skills of healthcare professionals. Healthcare professionals receive a blended training (e-learning, face-to-face skills training) in self-management support skills. In addition, BreeZe incorporates tools such as the self-management web, which is a decision tool helping burn survivors to identify and prioritize their problems from a holistic point of view, set personalized goals, and form an action plan. The content and implementation study of Breeze will be presented.