Parental Experience of Healthcare Access during the Covid-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

Aims Many paediatric emergency departments (PED) reported an unexpected increase in attendances during summer 2021;most of these children were stated to have minor illnesses and were discharged with reassurance. The primary objective of our questionnaire was to obtain parental perspective of how changes to local acute paediatric healthcare services in response to Covid-19 had impacted upon accessing care for their children. Additional objectives aimed to identify if parents were more worried about their child's health in view of the pandemic, understand parents' ideas of how children should be assessed when unwell, and explore how parents felt remote consultations could be improved. Methods A questionnaire comprised of Likert scale, multiple choice and free-text questions was developed to explore the study aiSeveral iterations of the questionnaire were test-run with parents prior to roll-out. The project was registered with the Trust's Quality Improvement team. A total of 88 families presenting to the paediatric emergency department and local urgent treatment centres completed the questionnaire between 26th October and 31st December 2021. Excluded were families for whom a translator was needed for their medical assessment. A thematic analysis was performed using NVivo, and quantitative analysis performed using PRISM statistical software. Results 68.2% of parents had sought medical advice outside of the PED prior to presentation, either in the community and/or online. 20.5% of respondents sought healthcare input from two or more sources prior to attending PED. Figure 1 outlines the responses to Likert-scale questions. Statistical analysis of the responses in relation to of age of child, number of children in the family and whether English was the family's first language was performed. Confidence of phone/video assessments and English/non-English as first language approached statistical significance (p=0.059). No other comparisons were statistically significant. Analysis of free-text responses identified key themes regarding the parental expectation of how children should be reviewed when unwell, and how parents thought remote consultations can be improved. An outline of the identified themes and a selection of responses are outlined in Figure 2. Conclusion The questionnaire identified that parents had still been able to access healthcare during the pandemic when they felt their child was unwell. Parents reported concerns of their children becoming sick with Covid-19, but still felt confident managing minor illnesses at home. The increasing volume of remote assessments in primary care was a necessary adjustment during the pandemic which is likely to be embraced as a more permanent model of service. Many parents recognised the benefit of remote consultations for non-urgent issues. However, a key theme from the questionnaire was the lack of parental confidence in remote (particularly phone) consultations;parents were more likely to still seek a face-to-face assessment in PED if they felt they couldn't communicate their child's signs and symptoms over the phone. As local networks embrace a more remote model of working to deliver some urgency and emergency care it is necessary to identify the cohorts of patients who may still attend PED, and plan how better to provide clinical reviews for them in the community.