Developing a health education comic book: the advantages of learning the behaviours of a target audience

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine the positive and negative coping mechanisms practiced by parents of paediatric inpatients and outpatients in order to prepare a health educational comic aimed at improving these response mechanisms. Data were collected from parents visiting general paediatric outpatient clinics or hospitalisation units, at a children’s hospital in a metropolitan city. Data analysis was based on 258 completed surveys received from 308 (83.77%) respondents. Each parent completed a survey that included the Brief-COPE-Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced questionnaire that encompassed 14 subscales of positive and negative coping mechanisms. Parents used both positive and negative coping mechanisms in outpatient clinics and hospitalisation units. Scores involving negative coping mechanisms were increased and associated with the severity of a child’s reason for visiting a children’s hospital. The lowest scores were reported by parents whose children were seen at outpatient clinics, whereas the highest scores were reported by parents whose children were treated in critical care units. Learning about parents’ coping mechanisms provided key information for preparing an electronic health education comic book (electronically distributed free of charge) and can be used to teach and promote the reinforcement of positive rather than negative coping mechanisms.

Keywords:

• Coping mechanisms
• hospital critical units
• health Communication
• multimodal communication
• Comics
• Health Communications
• health educational comics
• parental mental health
• parental emotional health
• parental stress

Acknowledgments

Data were collected with the help of two pediatrics residents Patricia Pena and Jose Maria Cardenas, and physicians, Maria Teresa Villanos and Jesus Peinado. The drawings and comic book design were prepared by Fabián Luna and Marie Leiner. Dan Blunk was the technical director and Marie Leiner was the producer and scriptwriter. Two medical students contributed to the final version of the comic, Stacey Mathews and Meenakshi Manivannan, as well as a doctoral student, Claudia Gomez.

Disclosure statement

The comic was developed by Marie Leiner and is free to use in its electronic format English and Spanish.

Additional information

Funding

Printing of comic for second phase of study was funded by an internal institutional SARP Grant.