Home Injury Prevention in Children: Attitude & Awareness of the Caregivers at King Abdul-Aziz Medical City - Pediatric Emergency, Riyadh, KSA

Introduction: Home injuries in children are considered as avoidable events, provided the preventable and risk factors identified. In order to assess the awareness and attitude of the caregivers who visited pediatric emergency department of a quaternary hospital, a survey was conducted regarding caregiver’s perception about the risk and preventive factors and its relation to various home injuries in children.

Methodology: A validated self-report questionnaire with 55 close ended questions was distributed to the 579 caregivers, who visited the pediatric emergency department.

Results: Caregivers are well aware about the mortality and morbidity related home injuries in children. Though their knowledge about home injuries in children is considered to be adequate, their attitude towards injury prevention needs to be addressed. The perceptions about incidents like falls at home (33.9%), toxin ingestion (5.7%), burns (15.7%), drowning (8.1%), baby walker (19.5%) and television (TV) fall injuries (6.9%) are found to be statistically significant with related preventable and risk factors.

Conclusion and Recommendation: It is concluded that parents and caregivers are willing to be, and need to be, better educated about various preventive and risk factors of home injuries in children. They need to be further educated for attending workshops on injury prevention as 97.4% of the care givers have never been to any workshop. This study also urges the need for injury prevention outreach programs across the country. Educational efforts and preventive measures made at international level for parental awareness of home injuries and safety measures are proved to have a major impact on the caregivers’ practice and knowledge toward home safety measures.