Abstract

Background and Objectives. Hospital fear is a critical modifier of patient compliance and medical care quality in all age groups, but most importantly in paediatrics, as hospital fear can have lifelong negative effects. The aim of the study was to examine medical students’ attitudes and knowledge of paediatric hospital fear and pain management.
Methods. A questionnaire with 12 essay-type questions was administered to 256 5th-year medical students from the University of Tartu. The given questions were structured to determine the participants’ attitude and knowledge of paediatric hospital fear. Relevant keywords were selected, students’ answers were thoroughly analysed and interpreted.
Results. The data revealed that only 5.5% of the medical students did not consider hospital fear a relevant problem. 88.3% of those surveyed believed that fear must be primarily managed by parents, 45.7% said doctors played a key role, and 79.3% named that overall medical personnel responsible for reducing paediatric hospital fear. The four most important reasons why hospital fear needed to be managed were to prevent future fear (70.3%); provide high-quality medical care (66.8%); improve cooperation (48.0%); and minimize child stress levels (39.8%). The most reported pain management options for medical personnel were explaining procedures (73.4%); using distraction methods (50.0%); and being friendly and playful (20.3%).
Conclusions. We found that the 5th year medical students’ knowledge concerning hospital fear is quite comprehensive, but they still want more focused information about this topic. The skills on how to alleviate hospital fear and implement new distraction technologies are not yet included in the curriculum of the Faculty of Medicine, but it would be useful to educate students
on these topics. The study was funded by the Estonian Science Foundation grant PRG789.