Firoozeh Zare-Farashbandi; Elham Koohkan; Gholamreza Rajabi; Saeed Yousofian
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Cancer in children includes cases of cancer diagnosed in patients under 15 years old. In Iran, Cancer is the second cause of death for children under 14 and is the cause of 4% of deaths in children under 5 and 13% of deaths in children between 5 and 10 years old. In Isfahan ...
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Background and Objectives: Cancer in children includes cases of cancer diagnosed in patients under 15 years old. In Iran, Cancer is the second cause of death for children under 14 and is the cause of 4% of deaths in children under 5 and 13% of deaths in children between 5 and 10 years old. In Isfahan province, a total of 600 children have been currently diagnosed with cancer which has increased to 729 cases since the start of this project in April 2018. Since family is the main and primary source of support for children, it is necessary to remember that any care provided by family members of children suffering from cancer is affected by their access to credible and suitable information. Therefore, the first condition for proper decision-making by these children’s families is access to accurate information and optimal use of this information. Patients require information that is timely, relevant, and easily understandable. The information needs of patients suffering from different conditions are also different. Furthermore, attention to the information needs of parents of young patients is as important as attention to the information needs of adult patients because young children are incapable of searching for relevant information and providing necessary self-care and these responsibilities are instead shouldered by their families. The reason for selecting this condition in the current study was the prevalence of cancer especially in the Isfahan region. The statistics provided by Isfahan’s Seyed-Al-Shohada (Omid) hospital also confirm this prevalence. Since the number of studies on this topic is small in Iran and since children are themselves unable to access information relevant to their condition which means access of their families to relevant information can play an important role in the control and treatment of their condition, the current study aimed to identify and prioritize the information needs of families of children with cancer visiting Isfahan’s Seyed-Al-Shohada (Omid) hospital to improve sharing health information and therefore facilitate their treatment.
Methodology: This is an applied study conducted using a survey approach. The study population consisted of the families of all 729 children suffering from cancer visiting Isfahan’s Seyed-Al-Shohada (Omid) hospital between April and September 2018. Based on the Cochran equation, the sample size of 244 was selected using purposeful noncertified sampling from volunteers meeting inclusion and exclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria included being family members with at least one child with cancer and a desire to participate in the study while the inclusion criteria were refusal to continue participating in the study. The data-gathering tool was a researcher-made questionnaire with two parts. The first part included 15 items related to demographic information and the second part contained 4 components and 48 items identified based on 35 interviews with families of children suffering from cancer which were scored based on a 5-degree Likert scale (1=very low, 2=low, 3=medium, 4=high, 5=very high). Among these items, the first component included 19 items, the second 15 items, the third one was 7 items, and the final and fourth components included 7 items. The formal and content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by oncologists and experts on information-seeking behavior. The questionnaire’s reliability was calculated using Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient which was equal to 0.96 for the entire questionnaire, 0.95 for the first component, 0.93 for the second component, 0.91 for the third component, and 0.84 for the last component. Questionnaires were distributed and retrieved during face-to-face meetings. An informed consent form was signed by all participants and they were assured of the confidentiality of the information. An ethics code for the study was also acquired from Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Data was analyzed using SPSS software with descriptive statistics (average and standard deviation) and analytical statistics (ANOVA with repeated observations, and LSD follow-up test).
Findings: To identify important information needs of patients’ families, a cutoff line of 0.75 of the total score (3.75 out of 5) was used. Based on this criterion, 33 items among the total of 48 items were identified as prioritized information needs of families, and 15 items were eliminated. The ANOVA test with repetition showed that there is a significant difference between the average information need scores of families in different components (P<0.001). The LSD follow-up test showed that the average score of the fourth component (social, financial, and spiritual support) was significantly higher than the second (providing information about cancer by medical staff) and third (healthcare and consultation facilities and equipment) components (P<0.001) while the average score of these two components was significantly higher than the first component (Access, retrieval and sharing of health information) (P<0.05). There was no significant difference between the average scores of the second and third components (P=0.10). Therefore, among the components of health information needs of families of cancer patients, the highest priority belonged to the fourth component (social, financial, and spiritual support), second (providing information about cancer by medical staff), and third (healthcare and consultation facilities and equipment) components had the next priority and the first component (Access, retrieval and sharing of health information) had the lowest priority. Furthermore, the average total score of health information needs for families of children with cancer was calculated to be 72.7 with a standard deviation of 16.1 from a total score of 100. The most important item in the first component of health information needs was “providing sufficient information to family members before and after surgery”; the most important item of the second component was “knowledge on treatment’s success chance”. Furthermore, the most important items for the third and fourth components were “access to physicians and medical staff for further questions” and “spiritual support of family members”, respectively.
Discussion: The results of the current study showed that the health information needs of families of children suffering from cancer are related to the health information needs of families of such children worldwide as well as the health information needs of families of sick children. However, there were some differences in the prioritization of health information needs which can be due to cultural, social, financial, and spiritual factors, type of disease, and children’s age group. The highest priority of families in the current study was financial, social, and spiritual support which can be due to– the financial difference between Iran with other countries. Furthermore, the component of access, retrieval, and sharing of the information has the lowest priority for the families and they prefer to gain their information from the medical staff. This difference can be due to differences in literacy levels compared to other countries and should be taken note of by the healthcare authorities. Finally, constant and regular assessment of health information needs of parents can help healthcare providers in providing timely and relevant information thus reducing the stress and anxiety of families, as well as improving their participation in self-case and homecare. On the other hand, low health literacy among family members and their reliance on information provided by medical staff means that clinical librarians can use access to various information sources to provide services to parents of children suffering from chronic conditions such as cancer, improve their information seeking skills and health literacy and play an indirect role in reducing the medical and healthcare costs of families and the country as a whole. Therefore, we suggest identifying and prioritizing the health information needs of families in other parts of the country and comparing the results to the results of the current study to acquire an overview of the health information needs of families of children with cancer in Iran. This information can then help policymakers and healthcare authorities in future planning and policymaking.
Zahed Bigdeli; Manigeh Shehni; zivar sabaghinejad; Gholamreza Rajabi
Abstract
Abstract Background and Objectives: Childhood conditions require special care and attention, believing that family, friends, environment, media could be all considered as environmental factors and motives that are related to the child and may affect all related affairs, activities, needs and other matters ...
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Abstract Background and Objectives: Childhood conditions require special care and attention, believing that family, friends, environment, media could be all considered as environmental factors and motives that are related to the child and may affect all related affairs, activities, needs and other matters related to it. These factors can play a very important role in shaping, directing and meeting the needs of children. The child needs to grow in a normal environment, have the necessary support and assistance so as he/she can assume his responsibilities in society and prepare for living as a member of the community. In the process of the child’s learning, many adults are involved. They provide necessary information for the child, so they can play an effective role. The first and most important group is parents who are in direct contact with the child all the time and interact with him/her more than everybody and, of course, will play a greater role in this direction. By knowing children's information needs, they can try to provide children with the necessary information in a variety of ways. Methodology: The main purpose of this research is reviewing and categorizing children information needs. According to the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC), children means up to 18 years old. This research use review-analytical method. First part reviewed researches which focused on children information needs. Much of the research is based on Maslow pyramid. Considering the limitations of access to foreign and international research database, extensive search was made at accessible databases. "information needs" was used as keyword and search was limited using "child", "children", "kids" and "young adult". The articles which paid attention to categorizing information needs of children were considered. Most articles were English and few were Persian. Some of articles which did not provide access to their full text, were requested through a document supply system, some of which were provided and studied. Some of articles were provided by contacting authors and received by email. Findings: A limited number of articles were received by email to the corresponding authors. A few articles were not provided in the ways mentioned, so their study was not provided. These studies are divided into two groups: some of them have focused on children's information needs (for example Farrell (1974), Fourie (1995) and Palaniandy (1998) and the other part specifically defines the information needs of children in different classify. In 1973, a conference was held on the occupational needs of ethnic groups and other groups in the United States. One of the focuses of this conference was to consider the information needs of children and adolescents as a specific group. Walter (1994) went to California, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to research about children's information needs. Because there is a presumption that the information needs of children are mainly examined by the elderly, the researcher decided to collect the required data from the elderly. Walter in this study found out that the results of his research were very much coherent with Maslow’s pyramid of basic human needs. Walter's findings suggest that children will experience the following information needs during their childhood: self-fulfillment, credit, love and belonging, security. Herman (2010), in his research on the information needs of children, offers the following categories of children's information needs: school related information needs, entertainment and leisure related information needs, personal information needs (problems that the person is involved in, medications, family conditions), information needs of specific individuals (such as children, intelligent children, people with disabilities, people with special problems, multilingualism, indigenous people who are not able to speak in the official language of that area). A review of the research that has been done so far has shown that most studies have focused on Maslow's basic needs for the information needs of children. One of the most important work that has been done to identify the needs of children on a global scale so far has been the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in Geneva in 1959. This article is based on Convention of the Rights of the Child and notify categories of children information needs which are related to: survival and life; social security and quality of life; self-support, abuse prevent; personal and family relationship, friendship; freedom of expression and thought; religious; books, informative sources, media and social networks; health; specialized training; self-esteem, personal and social dignity. Focusing on the nature of children information needs will help public librarians in collection development for children. Discussion: This research showed that needs to know about survival and life, social security and quality of life is one of the most important needs of children, article 26 in CRC was mentioned it. It will be so necessary in puberty and adolescence age. Child needs Information about self-support (article 3 in CRC), abuse prevent (articles 32-37 in CRC) for better deciding about child labor and economic exploitation, drug dealing, children's sales and torture. Information need about personal and family relationship and friendship (articles 9 in CRC) are important for social relations and detecting friends. Children needs to know about freedom of expression and thought (articles 13 and 14 in CRC). Child needs to know about religious (article 14 in CRC) and so he will need religious book, people and place. Information needs about books, informative sources, media and social networks (article 17 in CRC) is important. They need to know about national and international information resources and how to use them. Child needs information about health (article 24 in CRC). Child needs to know about sickness, how we get sick, what should we do with sick people. They need information about specialized training (article 28 in CRC). So teachers can play an important role and school is the best information texture. Child needs some information about entertainment and leisure (article 31 in CRC). They need to know how entertain themselves and how spare their time. Having information about self-esteem (article 29 in CRC), personal and social dignity will help children to know that they are also worthy of respect and have the right to object.
Zivar Sabbaghinejad; Gholamreza Rajabi; Fatemeh Rafieinasab
Volume 6, Vol.6, No.13 , May 2014, , Pages 107-127
Abstract
Aim: This study examines the Techno Stress among the librarians of both universities of Shahid Chamran and Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences. Method: The research population consisted of all the staff employed in all active libraries in both universities including the central libraries and the ...
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Aim: This study examines the Techno Stress among the librarians of both universities of Shahid Chamran and Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences. Method: The research population consisted of all the staff employed in all active libraries in both universities including the central libraries and the rest of academic libraries located in the schools and hospitals. Data collection was performed by means of two scales: the Ragu-Nathan Technostress Scale, and the Kohn Perceived Stress Scale. The data thus collected was analyzed by means of the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS). The the significance level was determined to be 0.01. Finding: Results of the ANOVA test showed significant differences among respondents regarding the different components of Techno Stress. The follow-up test of Tukee revealed that the differences come mainly from “Overload of technology” that received the highest average from librarians of both Shahid Chamran University and the Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences. Conclusion: Findings revealed a significant difference between men and women only in regards with “Invasion of technology” as a component of Techno Stress. Also, it was noted that among all, the “Overload of Technology” component stood out with the highest score obtained from librarians in both universities, meaning it needed more attention than other components of Techno Stress.
