'The mean mummy way' – Experiences of parents instilling eye drops to their young children as described in online forums and blogs

Abstract

Background: Adults often have difficulty instilling eye drops in their own eyes, but little is known about the difficulties experienced by parents when administering eye drops to their young children.The challenges of administering eye drops to children are accentuated by their poor cooperation, but little has been documented about the difficulties experienced by parents when administering eye drops to their young children. This qualitative study explores parents' experiences of administering eye drops to their children in online forum discussions and blog posts. Methods: The written exchanges between parents participating in online forum discussions and blog posts relating to the administration of eye drops to young children were thematically analysed. Results: We found 64 forum discussion threads and 4 blog posts, representing 464 unique contributors expressing their experiences of eye drop administration to young children. Three major themes were identifiedadministration difficulties, administration techniques and role of health care professionals. Besides describing their children's distress, parents discussed their own discomfort as the administrator of eye drops; alluding to feeling 'horrible' and 'cruel'. Parents used a variety of techniques to facilitate adherence with medication, including restraining the child, role-play, reassurance, distraction or reward. The recommended strategies for eye drop administration occasionally included reiteration of professional advice, but were dominated by parents' own ideas/suggestions; interestingly health care professionals were considered diagnosticians and prescribers, but not sources of practical advice on administration. Conclusion: Parental narratives shared on the internet have highlighted significant young child and parental distress associated with eye drop administration. The analysis of digital social networks has the potential to identify patient problems that health professionals may not have previously recognised nor appreciated the magnitude. The current study reveals that parents' experiences dominated the online discourse with their own advice and suggestions regarding administrating eye drops to young children but little did they recall on the advice from healthcare professionals, highlighting the need for clinicians in improving their explanations to parents about eye drop administration.

Medication Adherence and Common Barriers for Caregivers of Preschool Children with Pediatric Glaucoma

“…Recent studies found that caregivers of pediatric glaucoma children are experiencing a great caregiving burden due to the required lifelong followup visits and treatments, potential disease progression for their children, loss of wages and bonuses, and children's resistance to medication instillation [35,45,46]. Anxiety, depression, and declined quality of life often follow, which may indirectly infuence the quality of care they provide, including medication adherence [37,45,46].…”