Do Caregivers receive Health Information on their children's illnesses from Healthcare Providers while hospitalised?

To assess caregivers' knowledge of their child's illness following hospital admission and to determine whether healthcare workers (physicians and nurses) render health information during their daily routine works.

This cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out from July to October 2012 in University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin City, Nigeria among 108 caregiver and child (ages 0-5 years) pairs admitted in the paediatric wards of the hospital for common childhood illnesses. A semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to obtain data from the caregivers. Each child's case note was then reviewed to extract data on child's disease diagnosis and to check and categorize whether the attending physician(s) documented the content of health information provided to the caregivers. Analysis of data was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 16.

The children were 48 males and 60 females with mean age [SD] 19.6 [15.4] months. The caregivers mean age [SD] was 32.1[7.1] years (range 15-60 years). Majority (38.0%) of the caregivers had at least secondary or tertiary education. Two-thirds of the caregivers correctly mentioned names of diseases of their children; and 25/108(23.1%) received health information from the healthcare providers. Caregivers with primary or no formal education significantly did not know the correct names of the child's disease when compared with caregivers with either secondary or tertiary education (OR=2.8, p=0.03). There was no documentation of the content of health information rendered by the healthcare providers during their routine work.

Physicians should provide health information to all caregivers especially those with lower level of education. All cadres of health workers should be encouraged to give health information to health seekers utilising their facility.