Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 9, 2026
Community-based Adapted Tango Dancing for Individuals with Parkinson's Disease and Older Adults
Published on: December 9, 2014
Exploring Australian parents' knowledge and awareness of pediatric inpatient falls: A qualitative study
Danielle Ritz Shala1, Frances Brogan1, Marilyn Cruickshank1,2
1Nursing Research Unit, Sydney Children's Hospitals Network, Sydney, Australia.
Insights
Australian parents are often unaware of pediatric inpatient fall risks, despite knowing general fall risks. This highlights a need for targeted hospital fall prevention education for parents.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric patient safety
- Healthcare quality improvement
- Parental education in healthcare
Background:
- Pediatric inpatient falls pose significant risks, including harm, extended hospital stays, and mortality.
- Parental involvement is crucial for mitigating falls, yet their understanding of hospital-specific risks is under-researched.
- Targeted education is needed for parents, especially those new to the hospital environment, to enhance pediatric fall prevention strategies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore Australian parents' knowledge and awareness regarding pediatric inpatient falls.
- To identify gaps in parental understanding of falls risks within a hospital setting.
- To inform the development of family-centered, evidence-based fall prevention education.
Main Methods:
- Qualitative descriptive study employing thematic analysis.
- In-depth, face-to-face interviews conducted with parents of recently hospitalized children in Sydney, Australia.
- Interviews explored parents' knowledge, how they acquired information, and their awareness of inpatient falls and associated risks.
Main Results:
- Four dominant themes emerged: "Supervision: falls won't happen," "unexpected," "parent priorities," and "ways of learning about inpatient falls and risks."
- Parents demonstrated general awareness of falls risks but lacked specific knowledge that falls occur in hospital settings.
- Falls prevention was not a prioritized concern for parents during their child's admission.
Conclusions:
- Parental awareness of pediatric inpatient falls is limited, particularly concerning the hospital environment.
- There is a critical need to enhance nursing practice by improving the delivery, content, and timing of falls prevention education for parents.
- Family-centered strategies and targeted education are essential to address parental knowledge gaps and improve pediatric patient safety.
Purpose:
While there has been extensive published research into adult inpatient falls, less is known about pediatric falls in Australia. Falls pose a safety risk to pediatric patients potentially causing harm, increased length of stay, and death. Parents play a central role in reducing falls-related incidents given that, as parents, they provide care and/or oversee care delivered to their child at the bedside. Developing a better understanding of what parents and carers know about falls and associated risks, particularly those hospital-naïve, is central to developing family centered strategies and targeted education to meet the needs of parents. Our study aimed to explore Australian parents' knowledge and awareness of pediatric inpatient falls.
Design:
Qualitative methods utilizing descriptive thematic analysis.
Methods:
Parents of children and/or young people hospitalized during the last 6 months were eligible to participate. Potential participants attending the outpatient clinics of two tertiary pediatric outpatient clinics hospitals in Sydney, Australia were invited to participate in the study. Willing participants consented to complete a face to face in-depth interview. Open-ended questions sought to explore participants' knowledge, knowledge acquisition, and awareness of inpatient falls. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data familiarization and open coding were completed by researchers independently. Researchers explored and discussed emerging categories until patterns emerged and a consensus of dominant themes were agreed upon.
Results:
Interviews were conducted with mothers (n = 17), fathers ( n = 4), or both parents together (n = 2) of a child or a young person who had been recently hospitalized. Four dominant themes emerged from the data namely: Supervision: falls won't happen, unexpected, parent priorities, and ways of learning about inpatient falls and risks. Despite parents' awareness of falls risk, parents were unaware that falls occur within a hospital setting and did not prioritize "falls prevention" during admission.
Practice Implications:
Findings have implications for nursing practice, particularly in the delivery, content, and timing of falls prevention education.
