Behavioral support to parents through a cellular-phone website that provides the degree of urgency for medical attention of a child.
When a child suddenly falls ill, the child's family assesses if medical attention is required immediately. However, even in case of minor illnesses, it is not possible to approach a medical institution after consultation hours, and the burden on doctors from overtime-emergency medical examinations becomes a social problem. This study proposes the use of a cellular-phone website that provides information about the degree of urgency for medical attention to parents, who can choose the child's symptoms on the cellular-phone website regardless of the time or place. Therefore, through this study, parents experimentally evaluated the cellular-phone website; also, the effectiveness of this method as a behavioral support for parents was also evaluated. When an advice about the degree of urgency for a child's treatment was taken from the cellular-phone website, the parents felt relieved. Thus, the distress faced by pediatricians may change completely.
Faculty of Library, Information and Media Science, University of Tsukuba, Japan.
Mariko
M
Iwasawa
Jyutaro
J
Miyahara
Terasawa
T
Noriaki
Hiroki
H
Nozue
Ryo
R
Sumazaki
D001292:Attitude to Computers; D040421:Cell Phone; D002648:Child; D003258:Consumer Behavior / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D054626:Consumer Health Information / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D009035:Mothers / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019114:Remote Consultation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D061108:Social Media; D012944:Social Support