None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Often research to improve the care of children after surgery involves following up patient recovery at home. Until now this has been done at Perth Children's Hospital by telephone interview, however telephone follow-up is time consuming and might be inconvenient for families. We will test an automated interactive SMS messaging system to communicate with families about their child’s pain at home after tonsillectomy with 100 families. We expect that this will be easier for researchers and more convenient for families, and that we will be able to contact more families successfully using this method.
Interventions
Participating families will receive SMS message follow-up each day post-operatively requesting that parents report their child's daily pain score using a zero-to-ten (zero being no pain, ten being worst possible pain) parental proxy numerical rating scale. This follow-up will continue daily until either zero pain is reported on two consecutive days, or no response is received for two days. Messages will be sent automatically, and responses will be coded automatically where possible. When parents
Participating families will receive SMS message follow-up each day post-operatively requesting that parents report their child's daily pain score using a zero-to-ten (zero being no pain, ten being worst possible pain) parental proxy numerical rating scale. This follow-up will continue daily until either zero pain is reported on two consecutive days, or no response is received for two days. Messages will be sent automatically, and responses will be coded automatically where possible. When parents respond with a pain score of four or greater generic advice regarding pain medication and seeking medical review will be provided. When parents respond with a pain score of eight or greater a researcher will be notified to determine if the family should be contacted by clinical staff. Responses that cannot be coded automatically will be coded by a researcher. After follow-up is completed families will be asked to provide quantitative and qualitative feedback on how they felt about the SMS follow-up.
Sponsors
Prof Britta von Ungern-Sternberg
Study design
Allocation
Non-randomised trial
Intervention model
Single group
Primary purpose
Prevention
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
0 to 16 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
Children who are undergoing tonsillectomy at Perth Children's Hospital where the mobile phone number of the child’s parent or guardian is known
Exclusion criteria
None
Outcome results
None listed