Assessment of mothers’ measures against home accidents for 0–6-year-old children

AIM: Home accidents are one of the important public health problem, especially in childhood, because all can be avoided. We aimed to compare the sociodemographic characteristics of mothers with a child aged 0–6 years in terms of the safety measures they have taken against home accidents. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Our study was performed between July and December 2017 in the Trabzon, Kalkınma Family Health Center. Two hundred forty-four female volunteer mothers were included in the study. We evaluated the relationship between sociodemographic characteristics and scores from the ‘Scale for Identification by Mothers of the Safety Measures Taken by Mothers to Prevent Home Accidents in Children in the 0–6 Age Group.’ RESULTS: The mean age of the participants was 30.8±5.4 years. The frequency of home accidents was 42.6% (n=104). We found significant differences between the scale scores in terms of educational status and income levels (p=0.049, p=0.015). There was no significant correlation between the number of children and scale score (r=-0.067, p=0.299). There was a statistically significant difference between the total score of the scale and the person responsible for the care of the child at home (p=0.027). CONCLUSION: The childhood home accidents are important since they are preventable. The present study reveals the risk factors that may form a basis for the studies on preventing the childhood home accidents. In the scale used here, the score of participant determines the risk of home accident. The increase in the number of children in the house increases the risk of home accident.