Background:

Many parents visit paediatric health services due to unimportant reasons (ignorance of health problems of their children and psychosocial and emotional conditionings). The objective was to determine the effectiveness of a health education program, on the number and adequacy of pediatric consultations, in the first 6 months of the child´s life.

Methods:

Quasi-experimental study of an educational intervention aimed at pregnant women in the last trimester of pregnancy and their partners. A simple random sampling of the health centers of the province of Valladolid was carried out, assigning four to the intervention group and two to the control group. The pregnant women were informed and participated voluntarily during the period from October 2016 to March 2017.The program consisted of six dynamic and participatory sessions of 90 minutes: rational use of paediatric services, fever, respiratory infections (ARI), gastroenteritis (GEA), skin injuries, and accidents. The variables studies were: epidemiological data of the parents, number of consultations and their adequacy have been analyzed. Data analysis was performed using SPSS (v.20.0). Changes in participants before and after receiving workshops were analysed with Student’s t test for related samples, or with its alternative test, Wilcoxon’s non-parametric test.

Results:

191 pregnant woman were analyzed (101 control and 90 intervention). First-time pregnant women (62.3% intervention vs 54.1% control) with the high-school trained (59,1% intervention vs 44,2% control) were more participatory. The number of consultations for the reasons studied was reduced (3,5 in the control group vs 2,0 in the intervention group), and the level of adequacy improved in 16,3% (RR:1,62;95%CI:1,26-2,07;p<0,05).

Conclusions:

These positive results regarding the decrease in the number of consultations and the increase in their adequacy lead us to clearly recommend the establishment of prenatal interviews addressing most common health issues in children, in the Primary Care setting.

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