Mother’s role in preventing childhood home accidents

Abstract

Injury has been identified as a major public health problem in Turkey and internationally. In most developing countries, children, especially in 0 – 6 years age group, are at increased risk for home accidents. The aim of this study was to develop a scale for identification of safety measures against home accidents for mothers who have a child at 0-6 age group and to evaluate the efficiency of the education given to these mothers on preventing their children against home accidents. The study was performed in two phases. In the first stage, a Likert type scale with 5-points, consisting of 40 items, was developed. The reliability and validity of the scale was tested on 600 mothers who have children under 6 and were randomly selected from registration records of the primary health care centers of Sakarya. Cronbach alpha value of the scale which was studied for reliability and validity was found as .8205. In the second stage, a questionnaire and the scale developed by the investigator were applied to 30 randomly selected mothers. Instructions were given twice to the mothers by the investigator in their dwellings concerning the prevention of children from home accidents with a 10-day interval. In the last session, mothers were delivered a “Guide Booklet for Mothers to Prevent 0-6 YearChildren from Home Accidents”. Significant differences were found between the preeducation and post-education mean scores ( 177.53.±9.43 and 185.11 ±6.48 respectively). Following education, accident rates showed a dramatic decrease from 63.3% to 28.3%. We concluded that mothers who were trained and given a guide booklet tended to increase in house safety measures and their children were subject to fewer accidents.