The Burn Center at UPMC Mercy provides comprehensive support for patients at every phase of their burn injury, including emergency care, treatment for burn shock, and surgical repair to longer-term rehabilitation and reconstruction. Our services include:
The UPMC Mercy Burn Center features state-of-the-art hydrotherapy treatment, which is essential for treating serious burns. Hydrotherapy, which uses warm running water to gently cleanse and help the healing process of a burn injury, promotes healing by softening and removing the dead tissue, and enables new healthy tissue to form.
Additionally, hydrotherapy can:
Burns can be especially difficult for young patients, who face immense physical, emotional, and social challenges as they recover and heal. Every year, UPMC Mercy treats hundreds of pediatric burn patients, from infants to teens, who account for more than 900 visits to our outpatient burn center.
Our full-service team provides pediatric critical care medicine, pediatric anesthesia, infectious disease support, acute pain management (including oral medication, conscious sedation and nerve blocks), rehabilitation medicine, psychology services and child life therapy. The care we provide is tailored to each patient’s changing needs and age.
Our full-time child life specialist — certified by the Child Life Council — uses the “language of play” to help pediatric patients prepare for tests and treatments. Our professionals work one-on-one to reduce the stress and anxiety faced by pediatric burn patients, comfort them during procedures, and provide emotional support for them and their families throughout hospitalization and outpatient care. For more information about UPMC Mercy’s child life services, please call 412-232-8375.
Additional support services for our young burn patients include peer support groups through the Phoenix Society’s SOAR program, distraction therapy, Pet Friend therapy, and school reintegration programs. Each summer, our patients have the opportunity to attend Camp Susquehanna, offering children with serious burns the opportunity to forge new friendships, develop coping and life skills, and become more independent.
UPMC Mercy Burn Center’s Enchanted Forest is a special playroom featuring an area for burn rehabilitation. Contributed by the Ladies Hospital Aid Society, the Enchanted Forest offers children with burn injuries a welcoming safe haven as they receive care.
