Regional One Health’s Firefighters Burn Center treats patients from a 400 mile radius of Memphis, caring for the most severe burn injuries.
Our experts not only provide direct patient care, they spend their own time on research that can improve treatment for burn patients everywhere.
They’ve published reports on infection prevention, pain management, and more, and look forward to continuing their work in the years to come.
Burn injuries are unique in the way they impact systems throughout the body, cause severe pain and potential for infection, and disrupt a patient’s mental health and quality of life. Therefore, burns are often left out of clinical research studies that seek new ways to care for critical injuries.
Regional One Health Critical Care Pharmacist and Director of Burn Research David Hill, PharmD, MS, FCCM, FCCP, BCPS, BCCCP and his team are out to change that with a robust research program designed to improve patient care at our Firefighters Burn Center and beyond.
“Once you start doing research, it becomes a way of thinking,” said Hill, who published his first paper while he was still a student. “I’ve always wanted to answer questions and solve problems. With research, we can help by being analytical, providing support, and finding new solutions.”
As the only full-service burn center verified by the American Burn Association in the Mid-South, the Firefighters Burn Center treats the most severe burn injuries in our region. Hill said it is an excellent environment for finding new patient care concepts to explore.
“A lot of things can spark an idea for research – direct patient care, reading someone else’s work, seeing a trend in a patient population, seeing problems on our own doorstep that we want to fix,” he said. “Everyone on our team comes up with great ideas for research.”
In the past several years, they have focused on two key issues: pain management and infection prevention and treatment.
Our burn research team is a multidisciplinary group of experts who join forces to study ways to improve patient care. “It takes a lot of effort and you’ve got to want to do it – it definitely takes a team approach,” said Burn Research Director David Hill.
“Finding an answer to a patient’s pain after they’re burned is something the medical community has yet to do,” Hill said. “There are medications that are still understudied that we can explore, and new pathways to discover. There are also non-medication approaches, like education and setting expectations with patients, that haven’t been fully explored.”
Meanwhile, Hill said, infection prevention and treatment is an area where many researchers are especially hesitant to include burn injuries.
“Preventing infection and source control should be our focus,” he said.
During the past year, a lot of the team’s work responded to the reality that multidrug-resistant pathogens are getting worse all the time.
“Bacteria evolve faster than we can find treatments and some even transfer resistance mechanisms to other species of bacteria,” Hill explained. “As a worldwide concern, providers often use topical antimicrobials to treat and prevent infection. We try not to use them too much in prevention, but with a very large burn topical agents can be an effective measure to limit systemic exposure. We suspect these topical medications can create superbugs and dictate what grows next, but incidence and contributing factors are underreported.”
The team published several studies, such as “A Pilot Analysis for a Multicentric, Retrospective Study on Biodiversity and Difficult-to-Treat Pathogens in Burn Centers across the United States” and a letter to the editor in the Journal of Burn Care & Research responding to a recent manuscript titled, “Multidrug-Resistant Organisms: The Silent Plight of Burn Patients.”
Infection and pain will continue to be areas of focus for future research, and Hill is also excited about studying techniques to improve burn shock resuscitation.
David Hill is Burn Research Director. “It feels very much like a second family, and we tell patients, ‘You’re our family now,’” he said. “Being able to help people is what we’re passionate about.”
“After a big burn injury your blood vessels get little holes in them, and that doesn’t allow you to keep fluid in. You need to perfuse the organs to deliver oxygen and nutrients, but you have less volume in the vessels,” he said. “I think we’ve got some good answers on the horizon, and I look forward to continuing to study it clinically.”
For the team, research is a labor of love – and something they take on eagerly despite challenges that go beyond those in the clinical setting.
Research is not part of their formal job description, often leading to work beyond scheduled hours – meaning days spent helping care for critically-ill patients, providing medications, developing treatment plans, assisting nurses and therapists, educating students, etc. are followed by nights working on research.
Along with the actual bedside component, successful research involves designing an effective study, finding funding to support the work through grants or industry partnerships, performing statistical analysis, writing and submitting the publication, and more.
“It’s a journey,” said Hill. “It takes a lot of effort and you’ve got to want to do it. It definitely takes a team approach. For young investigators, I recommend finding a mentor or multiple mentors. Lean on others to help you – you don’t have to do everything by yourself. The team should feel empowered and take pride in owning bits and pieces of the process.”
Hill has seen that mantra work wonders at Regional One Health, where he completed his pharmacotherapy and critical care residencies and has been working for the past 15 years. “One of my mentors ingrained in me to ‘Pay it forward,’” he said.
During the day, the burn research team provides direct patient care. They use their personal time for research work, and have studied and published on topics including infection prevention, pain management, and more.
He noted patient care and research are truly a team effort at the burn center, and he and the team are proud to play a role that goes beyond providing medications.
“I love working with the multidisciplinary team at the burn center, and as pharmacists, we’re here to help any way we can. It’s not just medications, it’s problem-solving, talking to patients, helping with wound care, even grabbing a new set of sheets – anything a team member may need to care for their patients that day,” he said. “That extends to research. We’re always looking for ways to improve not only the overall care for our patients, but future patients around the world.”
“It feels very much like a second family, and we tell patients, ‘You’re our family now,’” he said. “Being able to help people is what we’re passionate about.”