BAPS paper
Information on the World Wide Web—how useful is it for parents?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2006.10.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Aim

An enormous amount of information about pediatric surgical conditions is available on the World Wide Web (www). Our aim was to ascertain how many parents accessed the www and how useful they found the exercise.

Method

Over a 2-month period, all parents attending the surgical outpatient clinics were asked to complete a questionnaire regarding Internet use in seeking more information about their child's condition. Parents were able to tick more than one option to the questions.

Results

A total of 271 questionnaires were collected and analyzed. There were 53% of responders who had accessed the www. Of this group, 93% used a computer at home, with 60% using the Internet daily. The most popular search engine used was Google (75%). There were 90% who used their child's condition as keyword(s), with 21% using their child's symptoms. The most popular information sought is as follows:

Topics%
More information89
Long-term outcome61
Medical treatment56
Complications48

Ninety-four percent found the Internet useful. Of this group, 18% considered the information too technical, 18% too distressing, and 2% insufficiently specific. Of the group who did not find the Internet useful (6%), 50% found little or no information, 38% too much information, and 13% thought the details were too technical. Only 25% discussed their findings with their surgeons. Of those who did not, most found that the information was already covered by the surgeons or was irrelevant.

Conclusion

The Internet is a useful educational tool in teaching parents about their child's condition. Parental use of the Internet is already widespread and may need to be specifically addressed during consultation. The best way to ensure that parents have access to quality and accurate information about their child's condition on the www, hence providing support, is to provide it ourselves.

Section snippets

Method

We constructed a 4-page option-based questionnaire regarding parental use of the Internet in seeking more information about their child's condition. A preliminary version of the questionnaire was tried on a small group of parents of pediatric inpatients to assess question construction and time to complete the exercise. The results from the pilot are not included in the analysis.

The final version was constructed and used for the study (Appendix A).

The questionnaires were handed out to the

Results

There were 274 questionnaires handed out. Three were excluded because there were questionnaires completed regarding the same patients but filled in at different attendances. The earlier answers were analyzed, and the latter excluded. A final number of 271 questionnaires were collected and analyzed at the end of the study period. The makeup of the respondents is shown in Table 1.

Fifty-three percent (144) of responders had accessed the Internet to seek more information regarding their children's

Discussion

This study highlights both the fact that there is a large amount of information present on the World Wide Web and that a large proportion of parents are prepared to access this information in an effort to understand more about their child's condition.

Our study has shown that 94% of parents who had used the Internet found it useful, especially in providing more information about their child's diagnosis. Studies in other subspecialties in the UK found similar results. Of the 32% of parents who

Conclusion

The Internet is a useful educational tool in teaching parents about their child's condition. Parental use of the Internet is already widespread and may need to be specifically addressed during consultation. The best way to ensure parents have access to quality and accurate information about their child's condition on the World Wide Web, hence providing support, is to provide it ourselves.

References (10)

  • Office for National Statistics

    Consumer durables: 78% of households have a mobile phone

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    Internet access: 64% of adults access the Internet

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    Use of Internet by parents of paediatrics outpatients

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  • N. Aslam et al.

    Evaluation of Internet use by paediatric orthopaedic patient and the quality of information available

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    (2005)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (0)

Presented at the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons 53rd Annual International Congress, Stockholm, Sweden, July 18-22, 2006.

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