Multimedia Based Information to Parents in a Pediatric Acute Ward: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Status: Completed

Conditions: Health Communication

Treatments: Behavioral: Multimedia information; Behavioral: verbal information

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01659879

LBK-2010/12-1

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aim of this study is to determine whether multimedia based health information presented in a pediatric acute ward to parents of children with breathing difficulties due to lower respiratory tract infections, is more effective than verbal information to reduce the parent's anxiety and to increase satisfaction with nursing care and health information.

Full description

The intervention website www.syktbarn.no is an open Norwegian online resource for parents of small children, and the site contains videos, audio clips, animations, illustrations, pictures and text materials regarding children's illnesses and normal development. In addition, the parents can use an interactive symptom checker that will help them to decide what to do and when to seek medical advice when their child is sick. The uniqueness of the website is the authentic video clips of sick children with common childhood symptoms like breathing difficulties, signs of dehydration, rash, cough and fever.

Enrollment: 101 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 10 to 105 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• parents of 0-15 years old children with breathing difficulties caused by LRTI (bronchiolitis, laryngitis or pneumonia) or asthma exacerbation
• ability to communicate and read Norwegian

Exclusion criteria

• parents of children with chronic diseases who have direct access to the acute ward, children with oxygen saturation less than 90 %, or other very sick children who need urgent treatment

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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101 participants in 2 patient groups

multimedia information

Experimental group

Description:

Health information concerning the child's diagnosis, treatment and recovery time after evaluation by the pediatrician, using a 15 minutes long standardized health information package with multimedia elements from the Norwegian website www.syktbarn.no (English version: www.childhealthguide.com)

Treatment:

Behavioral: Multimedia information

verbal information

Active Comparator group

Description:

Verbal health information by a nurse in the acute ward concerning the child's diagnosis, treatment and recovery time, after the evaluation by the pediatrician

Treatment:

Behavioral: verbal information