Diabetes Health Talk

The widespread problem of children failing to take their medication for a range of life-threatening illnesses is to be tackled as part of a new university research project.

The first phase of the study will be to look at methods previously tried to address the problem and to talk to three groups of school-age children — five to seven year olds, 10 to 12-year-olds and 15 to 17-year-olds — and their parents about their experiences of the healthcare system and medication. They will also interview a range of healthcare professionals including GPs, hospital paediatricians, community paediatricians and pharmacists, nurses and GP practice managers and secretaries about the issues they face in communicating their services to young people. Lastly, they will consult with other stakeholder groups including patient groups such as Asthma UK and Epilepsy Action and healthcare-related organisations such as the Royal College of Practice Nurses.

During the second phase they will design a new strategy that can be embedded within the whole range of healthcare services for children — this may include encouraging children and parents to write down their concerns or questions as a driver for their consultation with their GP and giving health practitioners a range of extra resources targeted specifically at supporting younger patients.

Dr Monica Lakhanpaul, Community Paediatrician and Senior Lecturer in Child Health at The University of Leicester, said: “We are fully aware that children may not take medicines sometimes prescribed to them by health professionals.

“Reasons for this vary — children and families may not receive information that facilitates their understanding of why they are taking their medicine and therefore not understand its importance; they may not understand how to take the medicine or the health professionals may not prescribe the type of medication that children could take easily, eg tablets instead of liquids.

“We wish to find out why — and why not — children take their medicine and use this information to develop a tool allowing health professionals to work together with children and parents and carers to improve the medicine they are prescribed. 
 
“A very important element of the study is to gain views from a number of different perspectives i.e from parents/carers, health professionals and children themselves.”
Lecturers at The University of Leicester are key collaborators in the study. Dr Hitesh Pandya is able to provide experience of working with families who are seen in the hospital and Dr Lakhanpaul, a Community Paediatrician, works with children who are managed out of hospital and who, in most cases, will not have a nurse or doctor giving their medication but need to take responsibility within the home or school environment.
 
Dr Lakhanpaul added: “Another advantage at Leicester is that we can provide access to a multi-ethnic community who are often under-represented in research studies. It is important to have perspectives from individuals from different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. We hope to achieve this by involving families from Leicestershire.”