Nursing care for patients with burns in Tanzania

Abstract: Burns are common in low- and middle income countrie ssuch asTarzania and firerelated deaths are numerous in Africa compared to high income countries in Europe. The nurse's primary professional responsibility is to require nursing care to people. Nursing care for burned patients is important and demands knowledge. Nurses in Tanzania experience difficulties in their daily work in terms of heavy workload and lack of material. Transcultural nursing aims to see care, health and illness from a cultural perspective and the goal is to provide competent care to people in different cultures. The purpose of the study was to illuminate how nurses in Tanzania take care of patients with burns.The study was implemented at the hospital Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi,Tanzania. A qualitative method was used;participating observations of nine nurses were carried out. The field notes were analyzed by content analysis and gradually two themes appeared; preventing infections and meeting the patient.The conclusion was that nursing care meant collaboration with the relatives, a calm and low stress atmosphere and concems about the patients' integrity. Difficulties experienced in the nurse's daily work were lack of time and material, but despite this the nurses wanted to improve the care of the burned patients in order to reduce the risk of infection. An interesting finding was that normally no contact was created between the nurse and the patient. Overall the lasting impression was that nursing care must be seen and understood in the cultural context.