Dataset Information

Information needs of parents for acute childhood illness: determining 'what, how, where and when' of safety netting using a qualitative exploration with parents and clinicians.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To explore the views of parents and clinicians regarding the optimal content, format and delivery of safety netting information for acute childhood illness.

Design

Qualitative study including semistructured focus groups and interviews.

Setting

First contact care settings, community centres, children's centres and nurseries in the Midlands, UK.

Participants

27 parents from a travelling community, Asian British community and white British community. Sixteen clinicians including 10 doctors and 6 nurses from a general practice surgery, an out-of-hours service and two emergency departments (paediatric and combined adult and paediatric).

Results

Participants described a need for safety netting to contain information on signs and symptoms of serious and common illnesses, illness management and where and when to seek help. Resources should be basic, simple to use and contain simple symbols. A key criterion was professional endorsement of resources. Internet-based information was desired which is reliable, consistent and up-to-date. Participants described a need for different types of information: that which could be delivered during consultations, as well as more general information for parents to access before consulting a healthcare professional. Face-to-face education, written materials and digital media were suggested delivery mechanisms. Audiovisual material was preferred by families with low literacy. Participants commonly suggested internet-based and phone-based resources, but the travelling community was less comfortable with these approaches.

Conclusions

A multifaceted and tailored approach to safety netting is needed so that effective resources are available for parents with varying information needs, literacy levels and ability to use information technology. We have identified key aspects of content, quality criteria, format and delivery mechanisms for safety netting information from the perspectives of clinicians and parents. Resources should be coproduced with parents and clinicians to ensure that they are valued and utilised by both groups.

SUBMITTER: Jones CH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3902331 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Information needs of parents for acute childhood illness: determining 'what, how, where and when' of safety netting using a qualitative exploration with parents and clinicians.

Jones Caroline H D CH Neill Sarah S Lakhanpaul Monica M Roland Damian D Singlehurst-Mooney Hayley H Thompson Matthew M

BMJ open 20140114 1

<h4>Objective</h4>To explore the views of parents and clinicians regarding the optimal content, format and delivery of safety netting information for acute childhood illness.<h4>Design</h4>Qualitative study including semistructured focus groups and interviews.<h4>Setting</h4>First contact care settings, community centres, children's centres and nurseries in the Midlands, UK.<h4>Participants</h4>27 parents from a travelling community, Asian British community and white British community. Sixteen c ...[more]

PMID: 24430877

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundAcute illness is common in childhood, and it is difficult for healthcare professionals to distinguish seriously ill children from the vast majority with minor or self-limiting illnesses. Safety netting provides parents with advice on when and where to return if their child deteriorates, and it is widely recommended that parents of acutely sick young children should be given safety netting advice. Yet little is known about how and when this is given. We aimed to understand what safety netting advice first contact clinicians give parents of acutely sick young children, how, when, and why.MethodsThis was a qualitative study. Interviews and focus groups were held with doctors and nurses in a general practice surgery, a District General Hospital emergency department, a paediatric emergency department, and an out-of-hours service. Data were analysed using the method of constant comparison.ResultsSixteen clinicians participated. They described that safety netting advice includes advising parents what to look for, when and where to seek help. How safety netting was delivered and whether it was verbal or written was inconsistent, and no participants described being trained in this area. Safety netting appeared to be rarely documented, and was left to individual preference. Limitations of written materials, and structural barriers to the provision of safety netting, were perceived. Participants described that safety netting was influenced by clinicians' experience, confidence, time and knowledge; and perceived parental anxiety, experience, and competence. Participants noted several limitations to safety netting including not knowing if it has been understood by parents or been effective; parental difficulty interpreting information and desire for face-to-face reassurance; and potential over-reassurance.ConclusionFirst contact clinicians employ a range of safety netting techniques, with inconsistencies within and between organisations. Structural changes, clinician training, and documentation in patient notes may improve safety netting provision. Research is needed into the optimal components of safety netting advice so that clinicians can consistently deliver the most effective advice for parents.

Project description:OBJECTIVE: Infobuttons are message-based content search and retrieval functions embedded within other applications that dynamically return information relevant to the clinical task at hand. The objective of this study was to determine whether infobuttons effectively answer providers' questions about medications or affect patient care decisions. DESIGN: The authors implemented and evaluated a medication infobutton application called KnowledgeLink. Health care providers at 18 outpatient clinics were randomized to one of two versions of KnowledgeLink, one that linked to information from Micromedex (Thomson Micromedex, Greenwood Village, Co) and the other to material from SkolarMD (Wolters Kluwer Health, Palo Alto, CA). MEASUREMENTS: Data were collected about the frequency of use and demographics of users, patients, and drugs that were queried. Users were periodically surveyed with short questionnaires and then with a more extensive survey at the end of one year. RESULTS: During the first year, KnowledgeLink was used 7,972 times by 359 users to look up information about 1,723 medications for 4,961 patients. Clinicians used KnowledgeLink twice a month on average, and during an average of 1.2% of patient encounters. KnowledgeLink was used by a wide variety of medical staff, not just physicians and nurse practitioners. The frequency of usage and the questions asked varied with user role (primary care physician, specialist physician, nurse practitioner). Although the median KnowledgeLink session was brief (21 seconds), KnowledgeLink answered users' queries 84% of the time, and altered patient care decisions 15% of the time. Users rated KnowledgeLink favorably on multiple scales, recommended extending KnowledgeLink to other content domains, and suggested enhancing the interface to allow refinement of the query and selection of the target resource. CONCLUSION: An infobutton can satisfy information needs about medications. Although used infrequently and for brief sessions, KnowledgeLink was positively received, answered most users' questions, and had a significant impact on medical decision making. The next steps would be to broaden the domains that KnowledgeLink covers to more specifically tailor results to the user type, to provide options when queries are not immediately answered, and to implement KnowledgeLink within other electronic clinical applications.

Project description:Introduction and backgroundSurvival following critical illness is associated with a significant burden of physical, emotional and psychosocial morbidity. Recovery can be protracted and incomplete, with important and sustained effects upon everyday life, including family life, social participation and return to work. In stark contrast with other critically ill patient groups (eg, those following cardiothoracic surgery), there are comparatively few interventional studies of rehabilitation among the general intensive care unit patient population. This paper outlines the protocol for a sub study of the RECOVER study: a randomised controlled trial evaluating a complex intervention of enhanced ward-based rehabilitation for patients following discharge from intensive care.Methods and analysisThe RELINQUISH study is a nested longitudinal, qualitative study of family support and perceived healthcare needs among RECOVER participants at key stages of the recovery process and at up to 1 year following hospital discharge. Its central premise is that recovery is a dynamic process wherein patients' needs evolve over time. RELINQUISH is novel in that we will incorporate two parallel strategies into our data analysis: (1) a pragmatic health services-oriented approach, using an a priori analytical construct, the 'Timing it Right' framework and (2) a constructivist grounded theory approach which allows the emergence of new themes and theoretical understandings from the data. We will subsequently use Qualitative Health Needs Assessment methodology to inform the development of timely and responsive healthcare interventions throughout the recovery process.Ethics and disseminationThe protocol has been approved by the Lothian Research Ethics Committee (protocol number HSRU011). The study has been added to the UK Clinical Research Network Database (study ID. 9986). The authors will disseminate the findings in peer reviewed publications and to relevant critical care stakeholder groups.

Project description:BackgroundMany parents choose support such as Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) for themselves and their children who have cancer. The aim of this paper is to describe, how parents who have children with cancer communicated with conventional health care providers about CAM, and what types and sources of information they would like to receive about CAM when the child was ill.MethodThis focused ethnography draws from in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with 22 families in Norway with 24 adult participants (two couples), including two individuals who had had cancer themselves. Four domains were explored in the data analysis: the use of CAM, advice from laypeople about CAM, communication with conventional health care providers about CAM, and parents' information needs about CAM.ResultsMany of the participants had personal experiences with CAM before the child received the cancer diagnosis. The health care providers did not raise the question about CAM in the consultations. However, when the parents raised the question, they were mostly met in a positive way. The participants did not receive any information about CAM at the hospital, which they would have appreciated. Instead, they received recommendations about CAM from laypersons, which were mostly rejected, as the advice was not in line with their health values/philosophy.ConclusionThe reason participants did not disclose CAM use is that physicians did not ask them about it. However, positive communication about conventional treatment facilitated fruitful conversations about CAM. The participants wanted information about CAM from authoritative sources, primary from health care providers at the hospital and the Children's Cancer Society. They demand information about risks and benefits when using CAM as well as whether CAM can improve the immune system, fight the cancer, and improve the quality of life of the family. An evidence-based decision aid is warranted to enable health care providers and parents of children with cancer to make well-informed decisions about CAM.

Project description:ObjectivesTo qualitatively interpret the information and supportive care needs perceived by cancer patients undergoing treatment in order to get a deeper appreciation of patients' needs and concerns. The intended outcome is to provide baseline knowledge for improving patient-centred strategies to better meet the information and supportive needs of patients.DesignA qualitative research approach, based on conventional content analysis, was used throughout the research process. The three open-ended questions obtained from a previous quantitative study guided the researchers to explore the information and supportive care needs of patients. Data from patients' responses were analysed and coded in themes.Participants and settingPatients attending the Ambulatory Treatment Unit of the National Cancer Centre Singapore were invited to participate in the study. We determined from these subjects the type of information that cancer patients need, and to measure the extent to which these information needs are met by measuring patients' level of satisfaction. Included in the quantitative study were three open-ended questions designed to gain a deeper understanding of their needs and concerns. All subjects were aged 21 years and above and able to understand and communicate in English/Mandarin. They were also aware of their diagnosis, they were not cognitively impaired and were not at the end-of-life situation.ResultsA variety of information and supportive care needs were identified, and three specific areas of concerns were identified: (1) psychosocial and supportive care needs, (2) information needs and (3) information delivery by professionals.ConclusionThe information and supportive care needs expressed were consistent with issues of cancer patients undergoing treatment. The strategies to improve patients' coping abilities through patient-centred care are discussed. Further studies assessing the barriers of information provision by healthcare professionals should provide more detailed knowledge about unmet information needs.

Dataset Information

Information needs of parents for acute childhood illness: determining 'what, how, where and when' of safety netting using a qualitative exploration with parents and clinicians.

Objective

Design

Setting

Participants

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Information needs of parents for acute childhood illness: determining 'what, how, where and when' of safety netting using a qualitative exploration with parents and clinicians.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets