Effects of pulmonary rehabilitation program on knowledge and child caring behaviors in parents of children with acute respiratory tract infection prior to discharge from hospital

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the effects of computer assisted instruction of pulmonary rehabilitation program for children hospitalized with acute respiratory tract infection on parental child caring knowledge and behaviors.

Methods: Two main workouts were performed before the study. (1) Designed and test-retest reliabilities of three assessment tools used for subjects such as the parental information, the knowledge test and child caring behavioral questionnaire. (2) Designed, program invention, correction and manual book writing. Twenty parents of children with acute respiratory tract infection were participated in this study. Each subject in the control group (n=10) participated all tests during an improvement of her child’s hospitalization period (pre-test) and discharge date (post-test). Each subject of experimental group had self-learning management of the pulmonary rehabilitation computerized program with additional demonstrations from the physical therapist. The experimental group also performed the same tests as in the control.

Results: The comparison of subjects’ child caring knowledge and behavioral scores between the control and experimental group showed no significant difference between two groups. The experimental group gained more scores of both knowledge and behavior of pre and post test except the post-test knowledge score of experimental group were greater significant difference than the control (p<0.01). The scores between pre and post test demonstrated that both knowledge and behavioral scores of post test had greater significant difference than pre test (p<0.01), except the knowledge score of control group.

Conclusion: The designed and invented pulmonary rehabilitation program for children with respiratory tract infection in this study would have been used within limitation as a clinical skill demonstration media for parents. Therefore, the physical therapists and other clinicians ought to be considered about sharing their service time for parents and patients to teach and suggestions. Bull Chiang Mai Assoc Med Sci 2009; 42: 258-264.