It truly takes a village — health care professionals from many different disciplines working as a team — to provide exceptional care for pediatric patients with burns.

That powerful approach is key to the care provided by the Pediatric Burn Program at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. And it was one of the things that most impressed a team from the American Burn Association and the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems, which recently recommended the program’s “full re-verification without any deficiencies” as the designated pediatric burn program for the state of Maryland and one of the top children’s burn programs in the United States. The designation means that the Children’s Center will continue to care for children with burns under the age of 15 in the state of Maryland and surrounding states.

“We passed with flying colors, and I think what impressed them is not only our amazing team, but also that we do a lot of research, and perhaps even more important, a lot of burn prevention outreach and education,” says Alejandro Vera Garcia, a pediatric surgeon who serves as the program’s director.

“They were very impressed with everything we’ve accomplished,” says Erica Hodgman, pediatric surgeon and the program’s assistant director.

Among those accomplishments is the use of new burn dressings that are less painful than traditional dressings and don’t need to be changed as often, as well as novel wound care technology. “We’ve had great success with a product that creates spray-on skin from the patient’s own cells, which means we’re getting wounds to close faster and don’t have to take as much skin from other sites on the patient’s body for skin grafts,” Hodgman says.

“We’re also doing more to manage smaller burns on an outpatient basis. And we’re working on more streamlined access to physical and occupational therapy, including having our physical therapy and occupational therapy staff members automatically see young patients in the emergency department so they can go home with exercises and not have to wait for an appointment to get started doing rehab at home.”

The Pediatric Burn Program at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center treats some 300 patients a year, including about 100–120 who are admitted to the hospital. The burns range from less serious cases, like kids who touch a hot stove with a fingertip, to serious burns related to house fires, fire pits and hot liquids pulled from countertops.

“All of these burns are preventable,” Garcia says. “It’s just a matter of education. We have injury prevention specialists who go out into the community, and we do news stories on fire prevention, fireworks safety and the like. If we are now seeing 300 patients a year, I would love it if in a year or two we were seeing only 200.”