Keywords:
Paediatric, CT, Education, Radiation safety, Education and training
Authors:
N. Kirk, C. Saidlear; Dublin/IE
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-2979
Aims and objectives
Parents play a significant role in preparing the child for a Computed Tomography (CT) examination.
Educating parents is pivotal in ensuring patient cooperation as it allows the parent to sufficiently prepare their child.
It also has the added advantage of potentially reducing parental anxiety.
By reducing the parent’s anxiety,
the patient’s anxiety can potentially be reduced prior to arrival in radiology.
This may also positively impact patient cooperation.
Parental anxiety can result from uncertainty and a lack of knowledge experienced by parents[1].
Patient information is designed to reduce anxiety and allow informed consent [2].
There are numerous studies in the surgical setting which have demonstrated reduced child anxiety when interventions were introduced to reduce parental anxiety [3,4,5].
There are very few studies on public knowledge and perceptions of CT or on parental knowledge of CT imaging.
Insufficient or irrelevant information can have a negative influence on service satisfaction [6],
as anxieties and concerns may not be addressed [7].
The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of an information leaflet on parental knowledge,
anxiety and satisfaction in a paediatric CT department.