Amanda Wilde (Host): One on One with Regional One Health is your inside look at how we're building healthier tomorrows for our patients and our community. Join us as we get to know some of the individuals who help provide life-saving, life-changing care for our community. Today, we're getting acquainted with Sarah Sabbatini. She is Burn Rehabilitation Manager at Regional One Health's Firefighters Burn Center. Welcome, Sarah. Glad you're here.

Sarah Sabbatini, PT: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Host: Can you first talk just a little about your background, why you decided to pursue a career in medicine, and specifically in burn rehabilitation?

Sarah Sabbatini, PT: Absolutely. So, I grew up, playing sports as a kid all the way through high school, was involved in the athletic and intramural department in undergrad and college, and have just always had an interest in the human movement, body sports, mechanics of it all. And so, that led me to apply and go to physical therapy school here in Memphis. I went to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, which happens to be across the street from our facility. And It's a three-year program. And throughout that journey, I started to lean away from the Sports Medicine side of Physical Therapy. I was drawn to the acute care side of Physical Therapy. A lot more flexibility. I felt like the work was meaningful, and I enjoyed a hospital setting and working with multiple disciplines, whereas you wouldn't get that experience when you're in an a traditional physical therapy clinic.

I did a rotation at a pediatric hospital and the clinical instructor that I was with, she was in charge of the burns that came through. This hospital treated minor pediatric burns, but that's how I got involved in burn care first. And then, it just so happened that Regional One was looking for a Burn PT same year I was graduating, so, I looked out with that one.

Host: Burns can be very serious, and they seem like one of the most serious, unique injuries. What are patients dealing with medically and emotionally? Can you talk about the services your team provides to help them?

Sarah Sabbatini, PT: Sure. Depending on the size of a burn injury that patient might sustain, we call that the percent total body surface area. They can be dealing with a lot of negative physiological effects that happen when you do sustain a burn injury. But the one that we focus on the most is the scar tissue formation that can occur as the body is trying to heal itself from a burned wound. And if it crosses a joint, it can cause you to lose motion, range of motion in a joint. Then, it becomes difficult to move. Our bigger TBSA burns also go through an increase in their metabolism, which can cause a multi-organ dysfunction, muscle wasting. They can become septic because they're at an increased risk for infection. So, there's a lot of things that can kind of spiral and happen after you do have a burn injury. You know, a lot of what we do in the ICU is going to be the wound care, the positioning, the splinting to make sure that, these patients, we're optimizing the motion that they can have. We're battling that scar tissue that's setting in. We're keeping their joints flexible, their skin elastic so that, once they progress to that out of bed mobilization and treatment in our therapy clinic, that they are moving as well as they can.

The unique thing about our burn center is the burn therapists only treat burn patients. So, we follow these patients from the minute they hit our emergency room to the minute that we're sending them back to work, we're sending them back to school, we're sending them home with their family. That's not how it happens really anywhere else. You get a therapist that treats you in the ICU, and then you move to a next level of care and you might get another therapist. And then, you go to rehab and you get another therapist. So, we are very blessed in that we get to follow these individuals from start of injury to end of injury. And that really does help us build, you know, a relationship with our patients and they trust us. We have great rapport with them in that sense. And we also know everything there is to know about them. It's a positive when you're treating these patients for so long, and coming up with their plan of care and their therapy.

So, we have a lot of different things going on in the clinic. We might have someone who was burned yesterday, who's in the ICU that's being treated next to someone who's been with us for three months and they're at home and they come three days a week now. Also, it creates a little community for them, a support group per se, that they encourage each other. They'll give them tips and tricks when it comes to what helped them, what worked the best for them in terms of like psychological things they were dealing with or where they got their custom compression garments, you know, anything under the sun. Our clinic is a multitude of things for the burn patients. And, you know, we try to provide them stability, provide them consistency and structure so that in the end they have the best possible outcome that we can achieve.

Host: And you do that by, as you said, focusing in on burn treatment only. I understand the Firefighters Burn Center is the only major burn center in the mid-south region. Do you work with other hospitals and emergency medical providers?

Sarah Sabbatini, PT: We are the only ABA-verified burn center in a 400-mile radius, and we have a referral system. So, there's a rule of nines that, when you get a burn into your ED, that if it meets one of those criteria, they will refer that burn to us, and then that burn gets transferred to our hospital system.

We have a large net that we capture. We treat patients from Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama. I mean, it's a pretty wide net that we capture. We are getting patients from all over.

Host: You mentioned so many things that come together to realize that it is so important for burn patients to receive care from professionals who specialize in treating burn patients, and getting that support medically and emotionally as you do through the center. Like you said, the community that's formed and the treatment toward each individual. What would you say is the most rewarding part of the work that you do?

Sarah Sabbatini, PT: The relationships that you build, not only with your coworkers, but also with the patients and their families. It's a difficult injury to go through. And not many people have a lot of knowledge or experience with burn injury. It's something, you know, you probably know someone that's broken their arm before or maybe you've done it yourself. So if a family member goes through that, you know, you kind of have an idea of how that's going to go. But with a burn injury, people don't suffer burn injuries very regularly. So, it's scary for the family and the patient. They don't know what to expect. And so, that's where a lot of times we can step in and help ease their mind in terms of your life isn't over. That's our goal, is to get you back to exactly what you were doing before, if that's a possibility for you. And we can answer their questions, educate them on what's going to happen in terms of their therapy, in terms of their care in the hospital, their care after the hospital. So, it's rewarding to be able to be that comfort for the family and the patient.

But also, a burn patient is a difficult patient to treat, as a provider as well. They're in a lot of pain. There's a lot of wound care that's involved. So, being a tight-knit group in terms of our burn rehab team and enjoying the people that you're working with and supporting your coworkers, that's also an equally important piece of being a part of a burn center, is the burnout is "real" when it comes to healthcare providers and being there for each other while treating this population of patients is important as well.

Host: Yeah. Supportive patients and support among your team to do that. That's really reassuring. Sarah, thank you so much for your insights and the work you're doing at Regional One Health's Firefighters Burn Center.

Sarah Sabbatini, PT: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Host: Pleasure. That was Burn Rehabilitation Manager, Sarah Sabbatini, Regional One Health's Firefighters Burn Center is the only full-service burn center verified by the American Burn Association within a 400-mile radius of Memphis. To learn more, visit regionalhealth.org/firefighters-burn-center. Thank you for making One on One with Regional One Health part of your journey to better health. Join us next time as we introduce you to another member of the Regional One Health family.