Effectiveness of mHealth-Safe Kids Hospital for the prevention of hospitalized children safety incidents: A randomized controlled trial.

Abstract

BACKGROUND\nPreschool-age children in hospitals are at a high risk of unexpected incidents. Safety incidents in hospitals can cause serious damage to the children.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nTo determine the effectiveness of the mobile-type mHealth Safe Kids Hospital (SKH) application (app) for the prevention of hospitalized child safety incidents.\n\n\nDESIGN\nThis study used a three-group, randomized controlled trial pre-post design.\n\n\nSETTING(S)\nThis study was conducted in the pediatric ward of three general hospitals in Korea.\n\n\nPARTICIPANTS\nA total of 124 eligible hospitalized children and their caregivers were enrolled in the study from June to December 2018. Of these, 116 finally participated in the study, and 8 were excluded because they were discharged before the intervention.\n\n\nMETHODS\nHospitalized preschool-age children and their caregivers were randomly allocated into three groups: experimental group I (n\xa0=\xa039), experimental group II (n\xa0=\xa039), and the control group (n\xa0=\xa038). Experimental group I received the SKH app intervention, the experimental group II received a paper-based intervention, whereas the control group received the usual intervention. Participants outcomes of awareness, knowledge, and behavior related to hospital safety, were assessed at two time points: baseline and 24\xa0h after the intervention.\n\n\nRESULTS\nHospital safety awareness had a higher increase after intervention in experimental groups I and II than in the control group. Among the four subdomains of hospital safety awareness, there was a significant increase in the scores of experimental group I on three subdomains after the intervention: falls (F\xa0=\xa08.19, p\xa0<\xa00.001), burns (F\xa0=\xa06.73, p\xa0=\xa00.002), and medical devices (F\xa0=\xa06.81, p\xa0=\xa00.002). In hospital safety knowledge and safety behavior, experimental group I had the highest average score after the intervention compared with experimental group II and the control group; however, there was no statistically significant difference in the average score of the three groups.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nUsing the SKH app is easy to attract the interest of preschool-age children and is also easy for nurses to use in clinical trials; thus, it is considered to be a useful educational intervention to prevent safety incidents in clinical fields in future.\n\n\nCLINICAL RELEVANCE\nIt is thought to contribute to the prevention of preschool-age children s safety incidents in pediatric wards.