A Pediatric Nurse Practitioner's initiative to support parents of children undergoing neurosurgical care: The Neurosurgery Kids Fund Website Evaluation

• Author / Creator

  Vogel, Christina K

• Parent with children undergoing neurosurgery need access to specialized information as well as support resources. The public is becoming more active in managing their own health care and they often turn to the Internet as a starting point in their quest for health information resources. The Neurosurgery Kids Fund (NKF) in Edmonton, Alberta was created by two pediatric nurse practitioners and launched in 2013 in an effort to help meet the information, support, and resource needs of this unique and special population. Google Analytics, a web analytic software program, an online survey questionnaire, and a focus group interview were used to evaluate parents’ usability and perspectives about a custom designed website about pediatric neurosurgery. Findings included that a health website, if carefully constructed, can meet the information needs and offer support resources to parents with critically ill children. Parents described timing in their child’ illness trajectory as a determinant to when they used the Internet to gain health information about their child’s medical condition or accessing support resources. Factors influencing avoidance of the Internet included fear, uncertainty, and being advised against it by healthcare professionals. The most frequently identified reason for accessing the NKF website was for information on Camp Everest. The next most frequently identified reasons were for medical, social support, and resource information. Parents reported accessing the NKF website regularly and will continue to use it in the future. Nurses and Advanced Practice Nurses (APNs) are now charged with assessing how and what parents are seeking online to meet their needs, and helping to direct them to safe, credible and reliable health websites. Further, issues in the future will revolve around how healthcare professionals are to evaluate health websites to recommend to their patients and parents.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Health
  • Children
  • Knowledge translation
  • Neurosurgery
  • Pediatrics
  • Evaluation
  • Web analytics
  • Informatics
  • Website
  • Parents
  • Information needs

• Graduation date

  Fall 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Nursing

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R31N7XV93

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.