Knowledge, Attitudes, Perceptions and Use of Traditional Medicine in Kids in Emergency

Arm 1 (3 month period)- Ethnographic Observation of patients and families when they present to the Paediatric Emergency Department. This will include observation of what information is requested from patients and families and what information is offered from patients and families to healthcare practitioners, patients will be observed through their journey after being triaged until they have a disposition (e.g. admission to the hospital, or discharge home). This is a one-off convenience sampling observation and the patients their families will not be contacted again post the date of the observation. Patients from Arm 1 will not be further contacted post observation of their care and will only have the opportunity to participate in Arm 2 if they re-present to Children's Emergency and scan the QR code on the posters advertising the survey portion of the study. Arm 2 (3 month period)- Survey of patients and families that present to the Paediatric Emergency Department specifically asking what traditional medicine and traditional healing practices that they use with their child and how effective they deem those to be. Questioning will include what traditional medical healers and western healers that they see with their child and the perceived effectiveness. Patient/Family Online (Qualtrics) questionnaire modified from NAFKAM International CAM questionnaire (I-CAM-Q) (Quandt et al. 2009) which is estimated to take 20-30 minutes. Surveys of healthcare practitioners will concurrently be done of Paediatric Emergency healthcare practitioners to find out their knowledge and attitudes towards the use of traditional medicine and healing in children. Healthcare practitioner online (Qualtrics) questionnaire modified from "Knowledge-Attitude-Practice TCM" questionnaire (Li et al. 2020) which is estimated to take 15-20 minutes. Arm 3 (will allow 6 months) - Semi-structured voice recorded interviews of patients and families that participate in Arm 2 and express interest to further discuss their use of traditional medicine and traditional healing use in children and the barriers and enablers to disclosure of that use to healthcare practitioners in the Paediatric Emergency Department. These interviews will be conducted by the Principal Investigator if the patients speak English. If the patient's and their familes are not English speaking or do not feel comfortable or confident being interviewed in English, then they will be interviewed by the Mater Hospital Refugee Health Consultants (G11) who have been trained in peer research through Queensland University of Technology. These interviews will be expected to take about 1 hour and participants can come and be interviewed in person at the research centre or it can be via phone. There will be no further questionnaires or physical assessments during this arm of the study. Concurrent semi-structured interviews of healthcare practitioners that have experience in traditional medicine and western medicine will also occur to find out from a healthcare practitioner point of view the barriers and enablers to disclosure and incorporation into use. These interviews will be conducted by the Principal Investigator and are expected to take between 30-45 minutes.