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Parental views on acute otitis media (AOM) and its therapy in children - results of an exploratory survey in German childcare facilities
BACKGROUND: Acute otitis media (AOM) is one of the main reasons for medical consultation and antibiotic use during childhood. Although 80 % of AOM cases are self-limiting, antibiotic prescription is still high, either for physician- or for parent-related factors. This study aims to identify parental...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4666068/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26620979 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12887-015-0516-3 |
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author | Kautz-Freimuth, Sibylle Redaèlli, Marcus Samel, Christina Civello, Daniele Altin, Sibel V. Stock, Stephanie |
author_facet | Kautz-Freimuth, Sibylle Redaèlli, Marcus Samel, Christina Civello, Daniele Altin, Sibel V. Stock, Stephanie |
author_sort | Kautz-Freimuth, Sibylle |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Acute otitis media (AOM) is one of the main reasons for medical consultation and antibiotic use during childhood. Although 80 % of AOM cases are self-limiting, antibiotic prescription is still high, either for physician- or for parent-related factors. This study aims to identify parental knowledge about, beliefs and attitudes towards, and experiences with AOM and its therapy and thus to gain insights into parents’ perspectives within the German health care system. METHODS: An exploratory survey was conducted among German-speaking parents of children aged 2 to 7 years who sent their children to a childcare facility. Childcare facilities were recruited by convenience sampling in different urban and rural sites in Germany, and all parents with children at those facilities were invited to participate. Data were evaluated using descriptive statistical analyses. RESULTS: One-hundred-thirty-eight parents participated. Of those, 75.4 % (n = 104) were AOM-experienced and 75.4 % (n = 104) had two or more children. Sixty-six percent generally agree that bacteria cause AOM. 20.2 % generally agree that viruses cause AOM. 30.5 % do not generally agree that viruses cause AOM. Eight percent generally agree that AOM resolves spontaneously, whereas 53.6 % do not generally agree. 92.5 % generally (45.7 %) and partly (42.8 %) agree that AOM needs antibiotic treatment. With respect to antibiotic effects, 56.6 % generally agree that antibiotics rapidly relieve earache. 60.1 % generally agree that antibiotics affect the gastrointestinal tract and 77.5 % generally agree that antibiotics possibly become ineffective after frequent use. About 40 % generally support and about 40 % generally reject a “wait-and-see” strategy for AOM treatment. Parental-reported experiences reveal that antibiotics are by far more often prescribed (70.2 %) than actively requested by parents (26.9 %). CONCLUSIONS: Parental views on AOM, its therapy, and antibiotic effects reveal uncertainties especially with respect to causes, the natural course of the disease and antibiotic effects on AOM. These results indicate that more evidence-based information is needed if parents’ health literacy in the treatment of children with AOM is to be enhanced. The discrepancy between reported parental requests for antibiotics and reported actual prescriptions contradicts the hypothesis of high parental influence on antibiotic use in AOM. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12887-015-0516-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4666068 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-46660682015-12-02 Parental views on acute otitis media (AOM) and its therapy in children - results of an exploratory survey in German childcare facilities Kautz-Freimuth, Sibylle Redaèlli, Marcus Samel, Christina Civello, Daniele Altin, Sibel V. Stock, Stephanie BMC Pediatr Research Article BACKGROUND: Acute otitis media (AOM) is one of the main reasons for medical consultation and antibiotic use during childhood. Although 80 % of AOM cases are self-limiting, antibiotic prescription is still high, either for physician- or for parent-related factors. This study aims to identify parental knowledge about, beliefs and attitudes towards, and experiences with AOM and its therapy and thus to gain insights into parents’ perspectives within the German health care system. METHODS: An exploratory survey was conducted among German-speaking parents of children aged 2 to 7 years who sent their children to a childcare facility. Childcare facilities were recruited by convenience sampling in different urban and rural sites in Germany, and all parents with children at those facilities were invited to participate. Data were evaluated using descriptive statistical analyses. RESULTS: One-hundred-thirty-eight parents participated. Of those, 75.4 % (n = 104) were AOM-experienced and 75.4 % (n = 104) had two or more children. Sixty-six percent generally agree that bacteria cause AOM. 20.2 % generally agree that viruses cause AOM. 30.5 % do not generally agree that viruses cause AOM. Eight percent generally agree that AOM resolves spontaneously, whereas 53.6 % do not generally agree. 92.5 % generally (45.7 %) and partly (42.8 %) agree that AOM needs antibiotic treatment. With respect to antibiotic effects, 56.6 % generally agree that antibiotics rapidly relieve earache. 60.1 % generally agree that antibiotics affect the gastrointestinal tract and 77.5 % generally agree that antibiotics possibly become ineffective after frequent use. About 40 % generally support and about 40 % generally reject a “wait-and-see” strategy for AOM treatment. Parental-reported experiences reveal that antibiotics are by far more often prescribed (70.2 %) than actively requested by parents (26.9 %). CONCLUSIONS: Parental views on AOM, its therapy, and antibiotic effects reveal uncertainties especially with respect to causes, the natural course of the disease and antibiotic effects on AOM. These results indicate that more evidence-based information is needed if parents’ health literacy in the treatment of children with AOM is to be enhanced. The discrepancy between reported parental requests for antibiotics and reported actual prescriptions contradicts the hypothesis of high parental influence on antibiotic use in AOM. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12887-015-0516-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-12-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4666068/ /pubmed/26620979 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12887-015-0516-3 Text en © Kautz-Freimuth et al. 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Kautz-Freimuth, Sibylle Redaèlli, Marcus Samel, Christina Civello, Daniele Altin, Sibel V. Stock, Stephanie Parental views on acute otitis media (AOM) and its therapy in children - results of an exploratory survey in German childcare facilities |
title | Parental views on acute otitis media (AOM) and its therapy in children - results of an exploratory survey in German childcare facilities |
title_full | Parental views on acute otitis media (AOM) and its therapy in children - results of an exploratory survey in German childcare facilities |
title_fullStr | Parental views on acute otitis media (AOM) and its therapy in children - results of an exploratory survey in German childcare facilities |
title_full_unstemmed | Parental views on acute otitis media (AOM) and its therapy in children - results of an exploratory survey in German childcare facilities |
title_short | Parental views on acute otitis media (AOM) and its therapy in children - results of an exploratory survey in German childcare facilities |
title_sort | parental views on acute otitis media (aom) and its therapy in children - results of an exploratory survey in german childcare facilities |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4666068/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26620979 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12887-015-0516-3 |
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