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Measuring people’s knowledge and exploring the use of this measure for policies: assessing healthcare professionals’ knowledge about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and its risk factors

Measuring people’s knowledge and exploring the use of this measure for policies: assessing healthcare professionals’ knowledge about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and its risk factors
Measuring people’s knowledge and exploring the use of this measure for policies: assessing healthcare professionals’ knowledge about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and its risk factors
This thesis focuses on how it is possible to measure people’s knowledge on a topic where certain statements can effectively discriminate between knowledgeable and non knowledgeable people. It presents an application in measuring healthcare professionals’ knowledge about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and its risk factors. Identifying the best and worst prepared healthcare professionals allows policymakers to reconsider the structure of their healthcare system and to implement targeted training initiatives about this topic. To do so, this research uses data belonging to the SIDS Project, a project meant to provide the first data about this topic in the United Kingdom and Spain. The mail survey referring to the United Kingdom was carried out in the South Central Strategic Health Authority in 2012, while the Spanish one was carried out in the provinces of Barcelona, Lérida and Tarragona in 2012 and 2013. The target population for the British survey consisted of general practitioners (GPs), while the target population for the Spanish survey
consisted of paediatricians. Moreover, data about Italy were also available, which allowed cross country comparisons involving three different realities. This research shows that the Back-To-Sleep (BTS) message seems to have been effectively adopted by the British GPs, but, surprisingly, not as well received by the Spanish and Italian paediatricians. In the first case, in fact, more than 90% of the respondents recommended parents the supine position exclusively. In Spain and Italy, instead, this percentage was of 58% and 69% respectively. By contract, instead, the whole SIDS prevention message seems to have been better received in Spain and Italy than in the United Kingdom. British policymakers should reconsider the role of GPs in terms of delivering parents the BTS message, as they were found to be quite prepared. Spanish and Italian policymakers, instead, should try to increase the degree of adoption of the BTS message among their healthcare professionals. In particular, Spanish policymakers should urgently intervene in order to clarify that the supine position is the only one that can be deemed to be a protective factor against SIDS.
De Luca, Federico
079a076c-20af-4c1e-aa6f-cb82c7e126e6
De Luca, Federico
079a076c-20af-4c1e-aa6f-cb82c7e126e6
Hinde, Andrew
0691a8ab-dcdb-4694-93b4-40d5e71f672d

De Luca, Federico (2013) Measuring people’s knowledge and exploring the use of this measure for policies: assessing healthcare professionals’ knowledge about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and its risk factors. University of Southampton, Social Sciences, Doctoral Thesis, 217pp.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

This thesis focuses on how it is possible to measure people’s knowledge on a topic where certain statements can effectively discriminate between knowledgeable and non knowledgeable people. It presents an application in measuring healthcare professionals’ knowledge about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and its risk factors. Identifying the best and worst prepared healthcare professionals allows policymakers to reconsider the structure of their healthcare system and to implement targeted training initiatives about this topic. To do so, this research uses data belonging to the SIDS Project, a project meant to provide the first data about this topic in the United Kingdom and Spain. The mail survey referring to the United Kingdom was carried out in the South Central Strategic Health Authority in 2012, while the Spanish one was carried out in the provinces of Barcelona, Lérida and Tarragona in 2012 and 2013. The target population for the British survey consisted of general practitioners (GPs), while the target population for the Spanish survey
consisted of paediatricians. Moreover, data about Italy were also available, which allowed cross country comparisons involving three different realities. This research shows that the Back-To-Sleep (BTS) message seems to have been effectively adopted by the British GPs, but, surprisingly, not as well received by the Spanish and Italian paediatricians. In the first case, in fact, more than 90% of the respondents recommended parents the supine position exclusively. In Spain and Italy, instead, this percentage was of 58% and 69% respectively. By contract, instead, the whole SIDS prevention message seems to have been better received in Spain and Italy than in the United Kingdom. British policymakers should reconsider the role of GPs in terms of delivering parents the BTS message, as they were found to be quite prepared. Spanish and Italian policymakers, instead, should try to increase the degree of adoption of the BTS message among their healthcare professionals. In particular, Spanish policymakers should urgently intervene in order to clarify that the supine position is the only one that can be deemed to be a protective factor against SIDS.

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Published date: October 2013
Organisations: University of Southampton, Social Statistics & Demography

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 364842
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/364842
PURE UUID: 7a67bd05-e22e-4a38-8aaf-971d00f097a4
ORCID for Andrew Hinde: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8909-9152

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 02 Jun 2014 11:23
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 05:02

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Contributors

Author: Federico De Luca
Thesis advisor: Andrew Hinde ORCID iD

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