Effects of multi-component program on family caregiver’s engagement in promoting safety of hospitalized children: a quasi-experimental study

Abstract

Family caregiver’s involvement in improving patient safety was stated as one of the strategies that need to be undertaken in the hospital. A little is known about the study and has no tools that use to guide family caregivers. This study aimed to investigate the effects of multi-component programs on family caregiver's engagement in promoting safety for hospitalized children. A quasi-experimental study was performed during August-October 2019 in pediatric wards of public hospitals, North –Eastern, Thailand. 160 family caregivers were recruited with eligible criteria. The participants in the intervention group were given usual care and the multi-component program during the hospitalization of the child. The Multi-component program was developed under patient safety guidelines for child and ‘ARM’ was the content. There were leaflets, posters, safety talk training with video, and SMS alerts. The developed questionnaires were used to measure family caregiver’s knowledge, self-efficacy, and engagement in promoting safety for hospitalized children. Descriptive statistics were used for socio-demographics and scores of each of the outcomes. Independent sample t-test and Dependent sample t-test were used to compare the difference of outcomes between the group and within-group respectively. The Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to adjust the confounding factor. The result showed that the knowledge score and self-efficacy scores in the intervention group were statistically significantly higher than the control group (p < 0.001). The engagement score in each dimension and overall in the intervention group were higher than in the control group. There were statistically significant differences between intervention and control groups in both total scores and in each dimension (p<0.001). The multi-component program is beneficial for enhancing knowledge’s family caregivers and encourages them in order to engage in promoting safety for hospitalized children. This study recommended that the family caregiver should be encouraged by both educational material guidelines and the role of healthcare staff.