Bala Sundram Meshala, Kuppusamy Elavarasi, Yazid Farinawati, Rani Haslina
Department of Family Oral Health, Faculty of Dentistry, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Digit Health. 2023 Oct 12;9:20552076231203949. doi: 10.1177/20552076231203949. eCollection 2023 Jan-Dec.
Dental caries is preventable, yet it remains a common childhood disease. As children are dependent on their parents for oral health care, oral health education for parents is essential to ensure they understand the risk factors and consequences of dental caries and their role in its prevention. This study aims to explore parents' oral health education needs to enable the development and provision of a tailored online oral health education module.
Online focus group discussions were conducted among Malaysian parents to gather information about the content, layout and presentation of oral health information parents sought for the provision of oral health care for their children. Video recordings were transcribed verbatim and thematic analysis was performed using an inductive approach.
In total, 24 parents participated in the discussions and 4 main themes were uncovered. The first theme was perceived information needs related to dental caries, oral health care and the importance of deciduous teeth. The second theme was parents' preferred information resources which were social media, dentists, mobile phone applications and medical personnel. Thirdly, information delivery format and specific characteristics were recommended. The final theme was challenges and barriers faced in maintaining oral health due to parental constraints, child behaviour and external factors.
Parents' profound feedback and experiential standpoint stipulate the need for the development and delivery of a comprehensible and visually engaging oral health education module by healthcare professionals via social media to enable access to evidence-based information consistently.
龋齿是可预防的，但它仍是一种常见的儿童疾病。由于儿童的口腔保健依赖于父母，因此对父母进行口腔健康教育至关重要，以确保他们了解龋齿的风险因素和后果以及他们在预防龋齿中的作用。本研究旨在探索父母的口腔健康教育需求，以便开发和提供量身定制的在线口腔健康教育模块。
在马来西亚父母中进行了在线焦点小组讨论，以收集有关父母为孩子提供口腔保健所寻求的口腔健康信息的内容、布局和呈现方式的信息。视频记录逐字转录，并采用归纳法进行主题分析。
共有24名父母参与了讨论，发现了4个主要主题。第一个主题是与龋齿、口腔保健和乳牙重要性相关的感知信息需求。第二个主题是父母偏爱的信息资源，即社交媒体、牙医、手机应用程序和医务人员。第三，推荐了信息传递形式和具体特征。最后一个主题是由于父母的限制、孩子的行为和外部因素在维持口腔健康方面面临的挑战和障碍。
父母的深刻反馈和经验观点表明，医疗保健专业人员需要通过社交媒体开发并提供一个易于理解且视觉上引人入胜的口腔健康教育模块，以便持续获取基于证据的信息。
