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Parent's information seeking in acute childhood illness: what helps and what hinders decision making?
Sarah J Neill1, Caroline H D Jones2, Monica Lakhanpaul3
1School of Health, University of Northampton, Park Campus, Northampton, UK.
Insights
Parents seeking information for childhood acute illness often use the internet with limited success. Accessible, validated resources in various formats are needed, as low literacy can be a barrier.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Health
- Health Information Seeking Behavior
- Qualitative Research
Background:
- Acute childhood illness is common, posing challenges for parents in deciding on medical care.
- Parents actively seek information to guide their decision-making process for their child's health.
- Understanding parents' information-seeking behaviors and influencing factors is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore how parents utilize information resources when managing acute childhood illness at home.
- To identify facilitators and barriers in parents' decision-making regarding childhood illness.
Main Methods:
- An exploratory qualitative study design was employed.
- Data were collected through focus groups and interviews with parents.
- Participants included 27 parents of children under five years old from diverse communities.
Main Results:
- The internet was the primary source for pre-consultation information, but often yielded limited success.
- Parents preferred easily accessible, professionally validated, and simple information, with options for more detail.
- Information accessibility was limited for parents with low literacy levels, impacting both digital and print resources.
Conclusions:
- Despite abundant online information, parents require easily accessible, clearly signposted, and professionally validated resources.
- Information delivery must cater to diverse needs, including varying literacy levels and preferred formats.
- A "one-size-fits-all" approach to health information for parents is ineffective.
Context:
Acute illness is a universal experience in early childhood. Parents find it difficult to determine whether or not their child requires medical care and seek information to inform their decision making. Little is known about parents' information seeking behaviour and what helps or hinders their decision making.
Objective:
This study aimed to explore parents' use of information resources during decision making in acute childhood illness at home.
Design/Method:
This exploratory qualitative study used focus groups and interviews to collect data from parents of children under 5 years of age.
Setting And Participants:
Twenty-seven parents were recruited in the East Midlands, UK, in South Asian and Gypsy/Travelling communities, a Children's Centre and a private sector day nursery.
Findings:
Parents' pre-consultation information seeking was dominated by the internet, albeit with limited success. Parents liked easy to access, professionally validated and simple messages with access to more detailed information. Some parents always sought information through personal contact, whilst others did so when independent information seeking failed. When consulting a healthcare professional, parents liked to be given information to refer to later, although the information received varied. Importantly, neither hard copy nor the internet was accessible for parents with low levels of literacy.
Discussion And Conclusions:
Although there is a wealth of information parents can access independently, our findings indicate a need for easy access to clearly signposted, professionally validated resources and available in a range of formats provided through different delivery systems. One size does not fit all.
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