Critical illness color-coded warning stickers: A novel parent education method – A single-center observational study

Abstract

Background: Pediatric visits to children's hospitals are mostly outpatient and emergency room (ER) based. In busy outpatient departments (OPD) and ERs, children are reviewed quickly, and instructions are given to parents for management at home. Communication from physicians to the parents of the child may be deficient and incomplete, due to the high workload and other priority tasks. The purpose of this study was to assess the utility of simple color-coded information stickers for the OPD/ER file of the child for parents to recognize danger signs in their child to seek help early again if required. Subjects and Methods: This is a prospective observational study conducted on 1036 children in the age group of 1 month–18 years at a tertiary care hospital in Telangana state of India, for 1 year from January 2018 to January 2019. Results: Fifty-three of the patients were male, and the majority of them were in the 1–5-year age group. The perceived utility of the stickers was 85.3% in the affirmative. Only 14.7% felt they were not useful. Reasons for revisits to the ER/OPD were fever (33%), respiratory causes (37.7%), gastroenteritis causes (18%), head injury (9%), and epistaxis (1.5%). Conclusions: A simple color-coded sticker system used in busy OPDs and ERs in children's hospitals might prove to be a low-cost-effective communication tool for parents to utilize to recognize danger signs and report back for care when necessary.