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The Edmonton Firefighter’s Burn Treatment Unit is an eight-bed comprehensive burn unit, with four designated critical care beds and four high intensity beds, located at the ÌìÑÄÉçÇø Hospital. It is a shared management critical care unit specializing in the care of the burned adults (in collaboration with the Critical Care doctors) and children (in collaboration with the Pediatricians).

Our burn unit is the only one in Canada verified by the American Burn Association to treat both adults and kids. Our inpatients are cared for by critical care-trained nurses, as well as a dedicated team of occupational therapists, physiotherapists, respiratory therapists, dietitians, social workers, Child Life specialists, a psychologist, and numerous support staff. As patients’ care is de-escalated and they are transferred out of the burn unit to the Plastics 3D3 or Pediatrics 4D wards, they continue to be followed by the Burn team, both during their hospitalization and after discharge.

A recent review showed that over a 2.5-year period from 2022-2024, we admitted 571 new patients with thermal burn and/or frostbite injuries. The Edmonton Firefighters Burn Treatment Unit Site Medical Directors are Dr. Ted Tredget and Dr. Dennis Djogovic and burn-specialized plastic surgeons include Dr Peter Kwan, Dr Joshua Wong, Dr Alexis Armour and Dr Alexander Morzycki, who alternate their plastic surgery practices with covering the burn unit a week each at a time. These burn surgeons are all fellowship-trained in the surgical and critical care of adult and pediatric burn-injured patients. As plastic surgeons, we also provide reconstruction to burn survivors throughout their lives to help optimize their functional outcomes.

Adjacent to the Burn Unit on 3C2, the Acute Burn Clinic is a nurse-run, weekday clinic designed to provide assessment of acute burn wounds in adults and kids on an outpatient basis. Referrals from the ER, medical clinics, and patients themselves are accepted. A review of care provided in 2021 revealed that 222 new patients required 522 visits to the Acute Burn Clinic that year. Even though burn injuries are relatively infrequent compared to other trauma, the Edmonton Firefighter’s Burn Treatment Unit covers an extremely large catchment area due to its location. Many of our patients come from Saskatchewan, northern BC, NWT, Yukon, or Alberta north of Red Deer.

Once patients’ wounds are healed, their scars or other sequelae from the burn injury may be monitored on an outpatient basis through the weekly KEC Multidisciplinary Burn Clinic on Wednesday afternoons. This clinic provides important access for burn survivors and their families to specialized burn reconstructive care throughout their lives. Scar contractures may limit important daily functions such as vision, eating, hygiene and IADLs, as well as return to work. Many patients benefit from the laser scar reconstructive options offered by the UAH and STO operating rooms, as well as other outpatient reconstructive surgeries which are sometimes scheduled by the burn surgeons at the Misericordia, Grey Nuns, or Sturgeon Hospitals to reduce wait times.

This uniquely specialized team approach to burn care offers exceptional opportunities for clinical and basic science research, as well as teaching for undergraduate students, residents, and fellows. Examples of past and ongoing research areas made possible by our burn unit include scar pathophysiology and treatment, tissue engineering of skin, acute burn resuscitation, frostbite treatment and outcomes, wound healing, surgical education, AI applications for burn surface area/depth and scar quantification, limb amputation outcomes, free flap reconstruction for limb salvage, clinical use of skin substitutes, treatment of TENS, microbiology of burns and of course, epidemiology and outcomes after burn injury in both adult and pediatric survivors.

Our team and patients are fortunate to benefit from the fundraising efforts of the Edmonton Firefighters Burn Treatment Society since 1977. Recently, their purchase of a laser doppler imaging device has greatly facilitated our patients’ care by more accurately predicting their time to heal and need for surgery.
The team was featured recently on TV

Their tireless fundraising efforts also make the Annual Burn Camp for pediatric burn survivors possible. The Alberta Fire Fighters Burn Camp in partnership with Easter Seals Camp Horizon hosts a week-long camp for young burn survivors. Seventy campers between the ages of 7 to 18 attend the camp each year in August. Doctors, nurses, and firefighters donate their time as organizers, medical staff, and mentors. Burn camp can be a life-changing event for many of the kids who attend. The success of relies on the friendships created with fire departments and their firefighters, burn foundations and private companies across Alberta and beyond.

In Edmonton, we are very fortunate to be involved in the planning of the annual meeting to be held this year in Calgary on October 16-18, 2025. Call for abstracts is now open until June 16, 2025. Many of our Alberta burn team will be involved in the teaching of the Advanced Burn Life Support (ABLS) course at this meeting.

For publication entitled:
Lee, Justin J., Mahla Abdolahnejad, Alexander Morzycki, Tara Freeman, Hannah Chan, Collin Hong, Rakesh Joshi, and Joshua N. Wong. 2024. “Comparing Artificial Intelligence Guided Image Assessment to Current Methods of Burn Assessment.” JOURNAL OF BURN CARE & RESEARCH, June. doi:10.1093/jbcr/irae121.

2025 American Burn Association meeting posters:
- Validating a novel machine learning tool for objective measurement of clinical burn scar assessment, by Wong JM, Perry A, Gupta N, Joshi R, Chan HO, Hong C, Wong JN.
Jordan M Wong is a third year U of A med student
- Assessing housing status of inpatient admissions for thermal injuries: Insights from a Canadian burn unit, by Lee JJ, Sattar I, Dodd S, Schimmel T, Manchikanti S, Wong JN, Armour A
Justin Lee is a second-year resident in Plastic Surgery at U of A
2025 American Burn Association meeting presentations:
- A proof-of-concept for a continuous-temperature circulating water bath in frostbite limb rewarming, by McKenzie R, Wong JN, Armour A
Robert McKenzie is a third-year plastic surgery resident at U of A
- Creating transfer criteria for frostbite, in the Frostbite Educational Session, by Armour A.