Unintentional Home Injury Prevention in Preschool Children; a Study of Contributing Factors.
BACKGROUND
Different factors such as parents' knowledge and attitudes regarding preventive measures (PM) have a great role in reducing children unintentional home injuries. The present study aims to evaluate the contributing factors of unintentional home injury prevention in preschool victims presented to the emergency department.


METHODS
The subjects consisted of all the mothers of preschool children who were presented to the emergency department of Imam Hossein and Shohadaie-Hafte-Tir Hospitals, with unintentional home injuries, from March 2011 to February 2012. The participants were divided into two groups according to implementation of preventive measures status. The significant confounding factors of PM application was determined by chi-squared test and entered into the backward multivariate logistic regression model.


RESULTS
230 mothers with the mean age of 29.4 ± 5.2 years were evaluated. 225 (97.83%) of them were still married, 74 (32.17%) had high school education or higher, 122 (53.04%) were homemakers, and 31 (13.49%) worked outside the home for at least 8 hours daily. High level of knowledge (OR = 0.05; 95% CI: 0.002‒0.32; P = 0.002), appropriate attitude (OR = 0.12; 95% CI: 0.03‒0.51; P = 0.01), having at least three children (OR = 7.2; 95% CI: 1.1‒32.9; P = 0.04), daily absence of mother for at least 8 hours (OR = 9.2; 95% CI: 2.2‒35.46; P = 0.002), and a history of home injury during the previous 3 weeks (OR = 8.3; 95% CI: 2.1‒41.3; P = 0.001) were independent factors which influenced application of preventive measures.


CONCLUSIONS
Increasing mothers' knowledge level and improving their attitudes were facilitating factors and mothers' absence from the house for more than 8 hours a day and having at least 3 children were obstacles to application of preventive measures. In addition, a history of same injury during the previous 3 weeks increased the risk of repeated event.
Department of Emergency Medicine, Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran.
Somaye
S
Younesian
Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Soad
S
Mahfoozpour
Department of Emergency Medicine, Alborz University of Medical Sciences, Karaj, Iran.
Ensieh
E
Ghaffari Shad
Department of Emergency Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Hamid
H
Kariman
Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. ; Department of Emergency Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Hamid Reza
HR
Hatamabadi
Accidents; accident prevention; child; home; preschool; wounds and injuries