Parents’ experiences of participating in an intervention on tobacco prevention in Child Health Care

BACKGROUND: Child health care is an important arena for tobacco prevention in Sweden. The aim of this study was to describe parents’ experiences from participating in a nursebased tobacco prevention intervention. METHODS: Eleven parents were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. The material was analysed in a qualitative content analysis process. RESULTS: The analysis emerged four categories; Receiving support, Respectful treatment, Influence on smoking habits and Receiving information. The parents described how the CHC nurses treated them with support and respect. They described the importance of being treated with respect for their autonomy in their decisions about smoking. They also claimed that they had received little or no information about health consequences for children exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). The findings also indicate that both the questionnaire used and the urine-cotinine test had influenced parents’ smoking. CONCLUSION: The clinical implication is that CHC is an important arena for preventive work aiming to minimize children’s tobacco smoke exposure. CHC nurses can play an important role in tobacco prevention but should be more explicit in their communication with parents about tobacco issues. The SiCET was referred to as an eye-opener and can be useful in the MI dialogues nurses perform in order to support parents in their efforts to protect their children from ETS.