Kristina Stiles on Burn Prevention

Why did an advertisement for coffee prompt a nurse to contact the company to ask them to withdraw it? The answer is that the nurse in question has 20 years experience in burn care, and the advertisement — for the coffee chain Costa Coffee — showed a scene which, if replicated in real life, could cause serious injury.

That nurse is called Kristina Stiles, and she’s my latest guest on the show. I saw her post and was intrigued. After a brief introductory discussion, I realised that not only was this an opportunity to highlight how humans can underestimate risk but also to learn some fascinating techniques that are used to help prevent it.

On the show, we talk about the risk of burns and scalds, what you can do to prevent them from happening and get practical advice on how to respond if they occur.

For easy reference, the key lessons Krissie shares are:

• Most burn injuries happen in the home, so preventing burns is mainly preventing hot liquid scolds in our homes.
• Wherever you are working with boiling water, hot pants, hot oven doors, or running a hot bath, it's really important that you separate your young family members away from those areas.
• But if the inevitable does happen, it's 20 minutes of cool running water. This is still effective within three hours of the burn injury.
• Call for help, and then wrap gently, loosely in cling film or a non-fluffy clean cloth.