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Meeting the information needs of children in hospital
Veronica Lambert1, Michele Glacken, Mary McCarron
1School of Nursing and Human Sciences, Dublin City University, Ireland.
Insights
Children need tailored information to understand their hospital care and make health decisions. Healthcare providers should assess children
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Healthcare
- Patient Communication
- Health Literacy in Children
Background:
- Information provision is crucial for children's understanding of illness and healthcare decision-making.
- Limited research exists on children's perspectives regarding information received as hospital inpatients.
Purpose of the Study:
- To describe the process of information exchange between healthcare professionals and children during hospitalization.
- To explore children's experiences with information management in a hospital setting.
Main Methods:
- Ethnographic design utilizing semi-participant observations, interviews, and participatory activities.
- Involved 49 children aged 6–16 years with diverse medical and surgical conditions.
- Data collection focused on information exchange within a pediatric ward.
Main Results:
- Children reported varied experiences with information management during their hospital stay.
- Identified a need for child- and family-centered strategies to assess information needs and preferences.
- Highlighted the importance of understanding beliefs of parents and healthcare professionals regarding information delivery.
Conclusions:
- Healthcare professionals must develop strategies to better assess children's information needs and preferences (amount, format, source).
- A consensus is needed on the optimal information delivery methods and the best professionals to provide it.
- Emphasizes the necessity of a collaborative approach involving children, parents, and healthcare providers for effective information exchange.
Abstract:
The provision of information is an individual entitlement and a prerequisite to enabling children to understand their illness, make choices about their health care and be involved in decision-making processes around these choices. However, limited evidence exists on children's perspectives of information provision while an inpatient in hospital. The aim of this paper is to describe the process of information exchange between health professionals and children in hospital. Informed by an ethnographic design, data were collected using multiple methods, including semi-participant observations, interviews and participatory activities. Forty-nine children aged six to 16 years, with a variety of medical and surgical conditions, admitted to one children's ward at one children's hospital participated in the research. Findings revealed that children encountered a variety of information management experiences. The key message for health professionals is that there is a need to develop child- and family-focussed strategies for assessing children's information needs in order to determine their preferences for information (amount, format, from whom, etc.), to develop a method for gaining an appreciation of parents' and health professionals' beliefs about the optimal amount and type of information to relay to children, and to achieve consensus about who is best placed to transmit this information to children.
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