Evaluating a knowledge translation tool for parents about pediatric acute gastroenteritis: a pilot randomized trial

BACKGROUND: Pediatric acute gastroenteritis (AGE) is a common childhood illness with substantial health, family, and system impacts. Connecting parents to evidence-based patient education is key to effective decision-making and therapeutic management of AGE. Digital knowledge translation (KT) tools offer a promising approach to communicate complex health information to parents; therefore, we developed a whiteboard animation video for parents about AGE. To optimize future effectiveness evaluation of this video, the purpose of this pilot study is to assess feasibility of effectiveness outcomes and specific trial methods in four key trial domains. METHODS: A single-site, parallel-arm, pilot randomized trial will be conducted. The trial will employ quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate feasibility objectives in key scientific, process, management, and resource domains. Parents seeking care for a child with AGE in the emergency department (ED) over a 6-month period will be randomized to receive the whiteboard animation video or a sham control video. Quantitative data will be collected electronically in the ED and at home (4–10 days post-ED visit). Qualitative data will be collected via semi-structured interviews with experimental condition participants after quantitative data collection. Data will be collected to perform a sample size calculation for a full-scale trial. Scientific outcomes will include parental knowledge, decision regret, and health utilization, and estimation for these outcomes will use confidence intervals (CI) of different widths to illustrate strength of preliminary evidence. CIs will be presented alongside minimum clinically important differences (MCIDs) calculated using two methods: (1) data driven and (2) patient perspective. Descriptive statistics will be calculated to describe process, management, and resource domain outcomes. Qualitative thematic analysis will be conducted to describe additional process, management, and resource outcomes in the experimental group. Analyses will be performed using intention-to-treat. DISCUSSION: This pilot randomized trial will inform the design and conduct of a full-scale, effectiveness trial by gathering key data in four domains: scientific, process, management, and resource. These results will impact the emerging field of KT efforts targeting health consumers and advance the science on the best mode of patient education for acute childhood illnesses. TRIAL REGISTRATION: clinicaltrails.gov registration number NCT03234777. Registered 31 July 2017. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40814-018-0318-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.