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Abstract Severe burn injuries may affect the victim both physically and psychologically. Liaison psychiatry could be of major help to these patients. This study was aimed at developing a liaison psychiatric nursing intervention for psychosocial adjustment of patients with burns. It was conducted at the outpatient clinic of burns, at El-Demerdash Hospital affiliated to Ain Shams University using a quasi-experimental design on 50 patients with burns. Data were collected using an interview questionnaire form, and the coping with Burns Questionnaire. A liaison psychiatric nursing program for psychosocial adjustment was developed, implemented, and evaluated. The results showed that patients had low levels of use of coping strategies before the intervention. At the post-intervention phase, all types of coping strategies demonstrated statistically significant increases except for those of avoidance and self-control. The level of stress also decreased after the intervention (p<0.001). Stress had weak to strong statistically significant negative correlations with all types of coping strategies except avoidance. Multivariate analysis revealed that patient’s baseline score of coping, age, and burn surface area were the statistically significant independent positive predictors of the post-intervention coping score, while being married, having associated problems or permanent disability were negative predictors. In conclusion, burn injuries are associated with psychosocial suffering that mandate the use of coping. The implementation of a psychiatric nursing intervention is successful in effecting psychosocial adjustment among these patients, with improved coping leading to decrease stress. The study recommends wide-scale implementation of the developed intervention, with more training of liaison psychiatry nurses, and a multidisciplinary approach in the management of patients with burns. Further research is suggested to assess the effect of liaison psychiatric nurse on the long-term psychosocial suffering of the patients with burn injuries. |