Effectivenss of an Educational Booklet on Parenting Children with Congenital Heart Defects

Abstract

Parenting a child with a congenital heart defect (CHD) can be stressful. Along with understanding complex medical information, parents need to incorporate the impact of this medical condition on their child’s development. There is limited research documenting the usefulness of educational interventions encompassing both medical and child development information on parenting children with CHD or heart conditions. Using a descriptive pre-experimental one group pretest-posttest design, the current study explored the impact of an educational intervention which included an one-on-one review of an educational booklet, “The Heart of my Child”, developed by the researchers with 18 parents recruited from a pediatric cardiology clinic in eastern North Carolina. Participants completed surveys to measure pre and post-intervention knowledge of CHD and heart conditions utilizing the Leuven Knowledge Questionnaire for Congenital Heart Disease (LKQCHD), parenting confidence scale, perceived child vulnerability scale, and the parent-child relationship scale. All participants were able to name their child’s heart defect or condition and 14 (77%) were able to locate their child’s heart defect on a diagram following the educational intervention. While no significant differences were noted in regards to parental confidence, perceived child vulnerability, or the relationship with their child, half or greater of participants reported that the educational booklet was worth their time and energy, would recommend the booklet to other parents like them, and would refer to it as a resource in the future. To summarize, this unique educational intervention was a useful resource to promote understanding of CHD and heart conditions and has the potential to be practically applied for providing developmentally-timed reinforcement education to parents of children with CHD.