Parental anxiety and associated factors in pediatric hospital emergencies, a cross-sectional descriptive study

Abstract

Background: Pediatric hospital emergencies have increased hardly in the recent years, product of the irrational use and the over-massification. The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship between anxiety and sociodemographic factors of the parents and mothers. Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study on parental anxiety and associated factors in a pediatric hospital emergency service with sample n=200 fathers and mothers who demand care in a level 3 hospital in Valencia. (Spain), during march, april and may of 2019. It was estimated the reliability of the Anxiety Scale E-7 (STAI-E7). The data was obtained with a self-administrated and desired document for the purpose. Data related to the level of anxiety and possible predictive variables were collected. The analysis of the data obtained was performed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences program (SPSS, version 20.0 for Windows) and ordinal regression with the R commander program. Results: The results show that 75.5% of the people who went to the hospital with their children were mothers and 24.5% were fathers. The mean score obtained regarding the level of anxiety in the sample is moderate (9.18±4.92). Mothers present higher levels of anxiety than fathers (9.7±4.8 and 7.5±5.1, respectively). The probability of experiencing a higher level of anxiety in mothers is multiplied by two (OR=2.286; 95% CI: 1.212-4.353; P=0.01) compared to parents. The STAI-E7 scale presents a good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α=0.847). Conclusions: Mothers have higher levels of anxiety. It will be appreciated doing more studies to quantify the levels of parental anxiety, with the purpose of creating tools and programs to decrease it.