The effectiveness of raising Hong Kong parents’ awareness of antimicrobial resistance through an educational program with peer support on social media: A pilot study
Abstract Background To test whether parents’ awareness of antimicrobial resistance could be improved through the education programme with peer support on social media Methods A cluster randomized controlled trial with two-arms were implemented. The intervention program consisted of two weekly sessions and each session lasted for 90 minutes. A total of 48 parents had participated in the program. Parental knowledge, attitude, and their social network were measured before and after the program using the Parental Perception on Antibiotics (PAPA) scale and the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE) to assess differences between and within the intervention and control groups. Results All parents would have a sense that antibiotics could be effective at treating some infections and not others, as compared to 40% in the control group. All parents in the intervention group and 85% of the control group disagreed that they should reduce the dose of antibiotics when their children were recovering. The test was statistically significant (p = 0.039) with a p value < .05. There was a significant difference and a strong negative correlation between peer support in Facebook and the parents’ belief that antibiotics could be stopped when their children felt better, with Pearson coefficient of -0.78 and p = 0.001. In general, there was no significant difference between the two groups with respect to the GSE scale. Conclusions Based on the findings in this pilot study, a further study based on the education program with enhancement and peer support can be implemented in a large scale with a positive expectation of increasing parental awareness of antimicrobial resistance and potentially influencing patient prescribing expectations when seeking healthcare.