An assessment of burn prevention knowledge in a high burn-risk environment: Restaurants

Abstract

Our facility has seen an increase in the number of cases of children burned in restaurants. Fieldwork has revealed many unsafe serving practices in restaurants in our tristate area. The current research targets what appears to be an underexamined burn-risk environment, restaurants, to examine server knowledge about burn prevention and burn care with customers. Participants included 71 local restaurant servers and 53 servers from various restaurants who were recruited from undergraduate courses. All participants completed a brief demographic form as well as a Burn Knowledge Questionnaire. It was found that server knowledge was low (ie, less than 50% accuracy). Yet, most servers reported that they felt customer burn safety was important enough to change the way that they serve. Additionally, it was found that length of time employed as a server was a significant predictor of servers' burn knowledge (ie, more years serving associated with higher knowledge). Finally, individual items were examined to identify potential targets for developing prevention programs.