An assessment of parents’ knowledge and awareness regarding paracetamol use in children: a cross-sectional study from Palestine

BACKGROUND: Paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, is one of the most common antipyretic and analgesic over-the-counter (OTC) medicines administered to children due to its efficacy, safety, and availability in many pharmaceutical forms, including suppositories, syrup, and drops. Parents frequentl...

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Autores principales: Daifallah, Aiman, Jabr, Ruba, Al-Tawil, Faraj, Elkourdi, Moutaz, Salman, Ziad, Koni, Amer, Samara, Ahmad, Al-Jabi, Samah W., Zyoud, Sa’ed H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7890973/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33602192
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10432-5
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author Daifallah, Aiman
Jabr, Ruba
Al-Tawil, Faraj
Elkourdi, Moutaz
Salman, Ziad
Koni, Amer
Samara, Ahmad
Al-Jabi, Samah W.
Zyoud, Sa’ed H.
author_facet Daifallah, Aiman
Jabr, Ruba
Al-Tawil, Faraj
Elkourdi, Moutaz
Salman, Ziad
Koni, Amer
Samara, Ahmad
Al-Jabi, Samah W.
Zyoud, Sa’ed H.
author_sort Daifallah, Aiman
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, is one of the most common antipyretic and analgesic over-the-counter (OTC) medicines administered to children due to its efficacy, safety, and availability in many pharmaceutical forms, including suppositories, syrup, and drops. Parents frequently administer the wrong dose of paracetamol by mistake for their children, as reported by many previous studies. We aimed in this study to assess parents’ knowledge, attitudes, and practice regarding paracetamol dosing and toxicity, as well as their awareness regarding paracetamol-containing products. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study that targeted parents of children seeking healthcare services at primary health care centers in the Nablus area in the West Bank, Palestine. We used questionnaire-based interviews with parents for data collection. RESULTS: A total of 300 parents were included in the study. Most of the caregivers surveyed were (87%) females (mothers). About half the parents (50.9%) reported previously using paracetamol as an antipyretic in children under the age of six. A quarter (25.4%) preferred the syrup forms, while 33.8% preferred the suppository dosage form. Medical personnel was the primary source of information for half the caregivers (51.2%). The mean knowledge score about paracetamol was 2.1 (SD = 1.4) out of 6, and the median was 2.0 with an interquartile range of 1.0–3.0. Two hundred seventy-four (95.5%) of the participants scored less than 80% and were considered to have insufficient knowledge. Only 50.9% of parents recognized that paracetamol overdose could result in serious harm. CONCLUSIONS: We found a serious lack of knowledge regarding paracetamol dosing, administration, and potential toxicity among Palestinian parents. We recommend raising awareness regarding this problem among healthcare providers and authorities and working on plans that aim to provide caregivers with accurate and adequate information on dosing, formulation, side effects, and other aspects of paracetamol use, as well as developing effective educational plans targeting healthcare providers, as well as the public. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-10432-5.
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spelling pubmed-78909732021-02-22 An assessment of parents’ knowledge and awareness regarding paracetamol use in children: a cross-sectional study from Palestine Daifallah, Aiman Jabr, Ruba Al-Tawil, Faraj Elkourdi, Moutaz Salman, Ziad Koni, Amer Samara, Ahmad Al-Jabi, Samah W. Zyoud, Sa’ed H. BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, is one of the most common antipyretic and analgesic over-the-counter (OTC) medicines administered to children due to its efficacy, safety, and availability in many pharmaceutical forms, including suppositories, syrup, and drops. Parents frequently administer the wrong dose of paracetamol by mistake for their children, as reported by many previous studies. We aimed in this study to assess parents’ knowledge, attitudes, and practice regarding paracetamol dosing and toxicity, as well as their awareness regarding paracetamol-containing products. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study that targeted parents of children seeking healthcare services at primary health care centers in the Nablus area in the West Bank, Palestine. We used questionnaire-based interviews with parents for data collection. RESULTS: A total of 300 parents were included in the study. Most of the caregivers surveyed were (87%) females (mothers). About half the parents (50.9%) reported previously using paracetamol as an antipyretic in children under the age of six. A quarter (25.4%) preferred the syrup forms, while 33.8% preferred the suppository dosage form. Medical personnel was the primary source of information for half the caregivers (51.2%). The mean knowledge score about paracetamol was 2.1 (SD = 1.4) out of 6, and the median was 2.0 with an interquartile range of 1.0–3.0. Two hundred seventy-four (95.5%) of the participants scored less than 80% and were considered to have insufficient knowledge. Only 50.9% of parents recognized that paracetamol overdose could result in serious harm. CONCLUSIONS: We found a serious lack of knowledge regarding paracetamol dosing, administration, and potential toxicity among Palestinian parents. We recommend raising awareness regarding this problem among healthcare providers and authorities and working on plans that aim to provide caregivers with accurate and adequate information on dosing, formulation, side effects, and other aspects of paracetamol use, as well as developing effective educational plans targeting healthcare providers, as well as the public. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-10432-5. BioMed Central 2021-02-18 /pmc/articles/PMC7890973/ /pubmed/33602192 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10432-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 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 in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Daifallah, Aiman
Jabr, Ruba
Al-Tawil, Faraj
Elkourdi, Moutaz
Salman, Ziad
Koni, Amer
Samara, Ahmad
Al-Jabi, Samah W.
Zyoud, Sa’ed H.
An assessment of parents’ knowledge and awareness regarding paracetamol use in children: a cross-sectional study from Palestine
title An assessment of parents’ knowledge and awareness regarding paracetamol use in children: a cross-sectional study from Palestine
title_full An assessment of parents’ knowledge and awareness regarding paracetamol use in children: a cross-sectional study from Palestine
title_fullStr An assessment of parents’ knowledge and awareness regarding paracetamol use in children: a cross-sectional study from Palestine
title_full_unstemmed An assessment of parents’ knowledge and awareness regarding paracetamol use in children: a cross-sectional study from Palestine
title_short An assessment of parents’ knowledge and awareness regarding paracetamol use in children: a cross-sectional study from Palestine
title_sort assessment of parents’ knowledge and awareness regarding paracetamol use in children: a cross-sectional study from palestine
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7890973/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33602192
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10432-5
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