Introduction: Patient satisfaction is an important dimension of quality of burn care. Furthermore, as parents are increasingly involved in burn care, their views are central for improvement of pediatric burn care. However, there are still few studies tapping into this field. The aim was to describe parents’ view on quality of pediatric burn care and evaluate potential differences in perceived quality among parents. 

Methods: The parents (N= 62) were recruited on a national basis including the two burn centres in Sweden. The children had TBSA burned ranging from 1 to 31% and they were injured 0.8-5.6 years previously. Measures were an adaptation of the Quality of care indices - Parent questionnaire consisting of one overall question rated from 1-10 and 7 subscales; Information-Illness, Information-Routines, Accessibility, Medical Treatment, Caring Processes, Staff Attitudes, and Participation. Also, parents filled in the Impact of Event Scale -Revised, injury-specific fear-avoidance, the Montgomery Åsberg Depression rating scale, and rated their child’s general health according to the Burn Outcomes Questionnaire.

Results: Ratings of quality of care were high especially regarding Staff Attitudes, Medical treatment and Caring processes. Overall satisfaction was on average 9.1 (sd = 1.2, range 3-10). Quality of care was not associated with TBSA, TBSA-FT, length of stay, age of the child, or parent gender or age. Parents of girls expressed being less satisfied with Participation. Several of the parents’ quality ratings were moderately, but significantly, associated with parents’ symptoms of posttraumatic stress, injury-specific fear-avoidance and depression, as well as their ratings of their child’s health.

Conclusion: In this sample of minor to moderate pediatric burns, parents’ psychological health and view of their child’s health was more strongly associated with perceived quality of care than characteristics of the injury. As children easily acquire fears and negative expectations from their parents, it is important to minimize fear-avoidance among parents. Although satisfaction was very high, pediatric burn care might improve further by better information routines and by focusing more on parents of girls and on parents who themselves appear stressed, worried or depressive.