7 Healthcast: Treating the Victims

The work being done is truly amazing and grueling. Dedicated local doctors and nurses are working around the clock to help these patients heal.

Inside each of these plastic bubbles is a patient fighting to survive with scores of medical staff to help. Like the intensive care unit, the burn unit is a constant bustle of urgent activity. But the Rhode Island victims will most likely never even remember being here.

Mary Liz Bilodeau, MGH Burn Unit
"The patients are all under high levels of pain medication and sedation. We don't want them to have to remember this particular part of their experience."

Already the work for their recovery has begun in special operating rooms reserved the moment they arrived.

Mary Liz Bilodeau
"Most all of the patients have been to the operating room at least once. Some are on their second trip down."

…For the long process of skin grafting. Four patients are currently in this unit, another four in a similar unit at Shriners Burn Institute. Unlike the E.R., this is not a short term stay.

Nancy Mulligan, Shriners Burn Hospital
"We tend to use a figure that they'll be hospitalized one day for each percentage they are burned. So, a person with a 45 percent burn will look at acute hospital stay of 45 days."

Nancy Mulligan
"It's a long process. In addition to the surgery, they go through fairly grueling dressing changes, either once or twice a day. It takes on average one to three hours each time the dressing is done."

And it takes up to three people to attend to each patient, just to change the dressings. Extra staff have been called into the burn units of both Mass General and Shriners Hospitals. Also, patients have already begun physical therapy.