Knowledge and Attitudes of Participants on Childhood Injury Prevention Program

Abstract

Background: Education is an effective method to prevent injury in childhood. In Thailand, there are many childhood injury prevention educational activities but only few outcomes on these programs were reported.

Objective: To examine the knowledge and attitude of participants in the child Injury prevention program regarding child injury prevention, and compare knowledge and attitude scores before and after the educational program.

Method: According to previous data from the preschool children injury prevention education program in Chonburi, the knowledge and attitude scores of the participants were compared between before and after the educational program with the Paired t- test. Content analysis of participants’ opinions was performed.

Results: Fifty-one participants consisted of 21 teachers (41.2%), 18 third year medical students (35.3%), 7 nannies (13.7%) and 5 others (9.8%). The program included lectures and practice exercises in 3 learning stations of drowning, traffic and household injuries. Mean pre-test of knowledge score was 57.1%, attitude score was 73.1%. The drowning topic had less pre-test score than the average of all topics. Subjects had statistically significant improvement of post-test scores on knowledge and attitudes in all learning topics. The mean knowledge score improved by 31.2% (p <0.001). The mean attitude score improved by 16.9% (p <0.001). Most participants confirmed that they benefit from the program in terms of knowledge and attitudes for preventing unintentional injuries in preschool children.

Conclusions: Participants of childhood Injury prevention program have developed more knowledge and attitudes that are useful for preventing injuries in children, especially in the topic of drowning.