Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146585
Title: ‘The mean mummy way’ – experiences of parents instilling eye drops to their young children as described in online forums and blogs
Authors: Law, Gloria Chun Yi
Bülbül, Alpaslan
Jones, Christina J.
Smith, Helen
Keywords: Science::Medicine
Issue Date: 2020
Source: Law, G. C. Y., Bülbül, A., Jones, C. J., & Smith, H. (2020). ‘The mean mummy way’ – experiences of parents instilling eye drops to their young children as described in online forums and blogs. BMC Pediatrics, 20(1), 514-. doi:10.1186/s12887-020-02410-4
Journal: BMC Pediatrics
Abstract: Background: Adults often have difficulty instilling eye drops in their own eyes, but little has been documented about the difficulties experienced by parents when administering eye drops to their young children, where the challenges of instillation are accentuated by their inability to cooperate. This qualitative study explores parents’ experiences of administering eye drops to their children as described in online forum discussions and blog posts. Methods: This was an exploratory study using qualitative methods. We thematically analysed the written exchanges between parents participating in online forum discussions and blog posts about the administration of eye drops to their young children. Results: We found 64 forum discussion threads and 4 blog posts, representing 464 unique contributors expressing their experiences of eye drop administration to young children. Three major themes were identified – administration challenges, administration methods and role of health care professionals. Besides describing their children’s distress, parents discussed their own discomfort and anxiety when administering eye drops. Parents used a variety of techniques to facilitate adherence with medication, including restraining the child, role-play, reassurance, distraction, or reward. The ideas exchanged about eye drop administration occasionally included reiteration of professional advice, but were dominated by parents’ own ideas/suggestions; interestingly health care professionals were considered diagnosticians and prescribers, rather than sources of practical advice on administration. Conclusions: Parents struggling to deliver eye drops to their young children may seek advice on how to administer treatment from parental on-line discussion forums. The distress experienced by the young child and their parents is a powerful reminder to clinicians that procedures common and routine in health care may be challenging to parents. The advice given to parents needs to go beyond the instillation of the eye drops, and include advice on child restraint, distraction techniques and allaying distress. Forewarned of the potential difficulties and provided with coping strategies parents can employ when the child resists, could alleviate their own and their child’s distress.
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146585
ISSN: 1471-2431
DOI: 10.1186/s12887-020-02410-4
Schools: Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine) 
Rights: © 2020 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Fulltext Permission: open
Fulltext Availability: With Fulltext
Appears in Collections:LKCMedicine Journal Articles

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