Taylor Olivia Lauryn, Treneman-Evans Georgia, Riley Madeleine, Bond-Kendall Jo, Pike Katharine Claire
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
BMJ Paediatr Open. 2025 Apr 15;9(1):e003206. doi: 10.1136/bmjpo-2024-003206.
ΒACKGROUND: After the COVID-19 pandemic, children and young people (CYP) with long covid were managed in specialist clinics. However, there is limited research on how CYP who accessed long covid clinics experienced them.
We aimed to evaluate how acceptable paediatric long covid services were to patients. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with 13 paediatric patients were used to understand the experiences of patients with long covid. Recruited participants were aged 11-17 years old, had a long covid diagnosis, and accessed specialist paediatric service in the Southwest of England from June 2022 to September 2023. Clinicians working in the long covid clinics identified CYP who were eligible and asked their consent to be contacted by a member of the study team. All participants who consented to be involved in the study were sampled. Thematic analysis was used to extract codes and themes from the data.
Four themes were reported. Accessing specialist clinics helped CYP to feel validated; they appreciated consulting with clinicians who were knowledgeable about long covid and empathetic. CYP found comfort in knowing other CYP were experiencing long covid. CYP wanted to be proactive in their long covid management, appreciating regular appointments and the opportunity to learn about their condition. CYP desired normality, and therefore sought flexible appointment times, online appointments and reasonable adjustments. CYP found the waiting times to access long covid services were too long.
Our results stress the importance to CYP of several features of the care received in the specialist clinics. These relate to the experiences of CYP with long covid but potentially extend to CYP with other conditions, particularly long-term and/or poorly understood conditions. The results support creating community-based support groups for CYP with long-term medical conditions, providing online flexible appointments, offering early reasonable adjustments for school and providing quicker access to specialist clinics.
背景：在新冠疫情之后，患有“长新冠”的儿童和青少年在专科诊所接受治疗。然而，关于使用“长新冠”诊所的儿童和青少年如何体验这些诊所的研究有限。
我们旨在评估儿科“长新冠”服务对患者的可接受程度。对13名儿科患者进行了半结构化定性访谈，以了解“长新冠”患者的经历。招募的参与者年龄在11至17岁之间，被诊断患有“长新冠”，并于2022年6月至2023年9月在英格兰西南部接受专科儿科服务。在“长新冠”诊所工作的临床医生确定符合条件的儿童和青少年，并询问他们是否同意研究团队成员与他们联系。所有同意参与研究的参与者都被纳入样本。采用主题分析法从数据中提取代码和主题。
报告了四个主题。进入专科诊所有助于儿童和青少年感到自己被认可；他们赞赏与了解“长新冠”且富有同情心的临床医生进行咨询。儿童和青少年知道其他患有“长新冠”的患者也有同样经历时会感到安慰。儿童和青少年希望积极管理自己的“长新冠”病情，赞赏定期预约以及了解自己病情的机会。儿童和青少年渴望正常生活，因此寻求灵活的预约时间、在线预约和合理调整。儿童和青少年发现获得“长新冠”服务的等待时间过长。
我们的结果强调了专科诊所提供的护理的几个特征对儿童和青少年的重要性。这些与患有“长新冠”的儿童和青少年的经历相关，但可能也适用于患有其他疾病的儿童和青少年，特别是长期和/或难以理解的疾病。结果支持为患有长期疾病的儿童和青少年建立社区支持小组，提供在线灵活预约，为学校提供早期合理调整，并更快地进入专科诊所。
