Abstract

WAISMAN, Ingrid et al. Un proyecto para prevención de accidentes desde el consultorio del pediatra. Arch. argent. pediatr. [online]. 2005, vol.103, n.1, pp.23-30. ISSN 0325-0075.

Introduction: The intervention of the pediatrician in his/her office is one of the recommended strategies for injury prevention. Most of the Argentine pediatricians are aware of this, but usually they do not apply specific preventive measures. We propose to evaluate an educative program applied to the mothers of infants younger than 6 months in the pediatric office. This method is conceptually and temporally related with the National Immunization Plan. Objectives: 1) To determine the information levels and the behaviors related with risks and accident prevention in the mothers; 2) to evaluate the changes attributable to the program after its application, and 3) to identify the areas which represent the greatest difficulties during the learning process. Population, materials and methods: Mothers of babies aged 1 month, who attended to 16 pediatric offices from 9 cities in the provinces of Córdoba and San Juan, from August 1st, 2002 to May 1st, 2003. Design: This is a before-after intervention study without a control group. At the 1st month pediatric control, the initial survey (IS) was administered. It consisted in the following: mother and infant identification, record of variables and questionnaire completion. At the 2-, 4- and 6-month pediatric controls, brochures with instructions and illustrations about accident prevention, as well as verbal information, were given in occasion of infant immunization. At the last control, the final survey (FS), which was identical to the initial one, was administered. The main dependent variable was the difference between the average scores obtained in the initial survey and the final survey. The effect size was of 20 points. The secondary dependent variable was the percentage of correct answers obtained for each question. Other variables were: place of attention (public or private), marital status, education level, number of children and shared housing. Database was constructed in Excel; Epi Info v 6 and Stata softwares were used for the statistical calculation. Results: 205 mothers were enrolled and 144 completed the study. No statistical differences were found between the group of patients that completed the study and those who did not complete it. Dependent variable: In 144 mothers that completed the study, an average score of 51.7 was obtained in the IS. In the FS, the average score was of 73.9. When the variable was stratified according to the IS score, those mothers who had a score lower than 40 - who represented 23% of the total population - had average scores of 33.4 and 65.1 in the IS and the FS, respectively. Secondary dependent variable: In 17/23 answers, a significant change in the percentage of correct responses was found in the FS as compared with the IS. The questions with the greater percentage of wrong answers at the FS were analyzed. Conclusions: 1) The educational program contributed to improve the risk and accident prevention knowledge and behaviors in the studied population. 2) Changes were more significant in the group of mothers who initially had the lowest level of information. 3) The areas with greatest difficulties were surveillance behaviors and unsafe behaviors related with electrical accidents prevention and use of baby car seats.

Keywords : Prevention; Accidents; Injury; Pediatric office.

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