UW Burn Center Poster Wins People’s Choice Award

UW Burn Poster Winner

(People’s Choice award at American Burn Association’s 50th annual meeting)

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) reports that cooking is the number one cause of home fires and home injuries (www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/By-topic/Top-causes-of-fire/Cooking, accessed 2-9-2018).

The NFPA suggests that if you have a small (grease) cooking fire and decide to fight the fire, you should smother the flames by sliding a lid over the pan and turn off the burner.

Grease/cooking fires can result in either a scald (due to hot oil or grease coming into contact with skin), flame injury or both.

Classically, when individuals attempt to remove a burning pan from the stove top, they sustain burns to the hand, or they spill the grease on their anterior body, or they spill it onto the floor and slip on it sustaining burns to their posterior body (Klein et al. Burns 2005;31 (6) 765-7.) The important safety message to avoid these injuries is simple — extinguish the fire by sliding a lid over the pot.

This poster emphasizes this safety message of injury prevention using a comic to draw in the audience. Note that within the comic, the stove has been turned off in the final frame and the adult uses an oven mitt to protect herself while covering the pan.