Needle-related procedures are painful for infants, highlighting the need to enhance the use and understanding of non-pharmacological strategies to alleviate pain and anxiety during such procedures. This study aims to explore how needle-related routine care procedures, such as vaccinations and blood samples, are designed and described by parents and healthcare professionals to minimize pain and anxiety in newborns and infants aged 3 and 5 months, in the framework of Kolcaba's Comfort Theory. Using a convergent mixed-method approach, which combines qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis, the results are presented according to the three pillars of Comfort Theory: relief, ease, and transcendence. In total, 16 healthcare professionals, 40 parents, and 27 infants aged 0-5 months were included in the study. The findings describe how needle-related procedures were carried out and perceived by healthcare professionals and parents. Several key aspects were identified as important for alleviating pain, including support for parents, pain relief, preparation for parents, support and comfort for the infant, ensuring safety for the infant and experiences of well-being. The study suggests several practices to decrease pain and anxiety for infants undergoing needle-related procedures in routine care. These include supporting and preparing parents with information about the procedure and possible pain relief methods for the infant, fostering a calm environment, and ensuring the safety of the infant throughout the process.

From text: In this Brief report, we aim to illustrate vaccine coverage during the transition from 2-dose regimen to a 3-dose regimen.

BACKGROUND: The first year of a child's life is essential for promoting a healthy life, and the transition to becoming a parent can be a challenge; parents need to develop confidence in their own capacity to care for their child. The national Child Health Services programme in Sweden offers parental support, both on a universal level and in accordance with the individual family's needs. This study explores parents' experiences of an extended home-visit programme offered through a Family Centre to all first-time parents in a municipality.

METHODS: This case study is based on a qualitative reflexive thematic approach, using interviews with first-time parents. Fourteen mothers and five fathers who had taken part in the extended home-visit programme were interviewed by telephone between February 2023 and April 2024.

RESULTS: The analysis resulted in one overarching theme, Universal home-visits create preconditions for tailored parental support, and four subthemes: Relations and continuity are essential; Different professional competencies complement each other and reinforce support; Home environments increase the feeling of security; and The universal approach facilitates acceptance. The parents had mainly positive experiences and thought that extended home-visits could benefit all first-time parents, not only those in socioeconomically vulnerable areas.

CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that universal extended home-visits create preconditions for more family-tailored support and strengthen first-time parents in developing their parenthood, which in turn increases the possibilities for optimal growth and development of the child.

AIMS: An increase in psychosomatic symptoms among adolescents has recently been reported. Few studies have examined the relation between food intake and psychosomatic symptoms. The aim was to study the association between food intake and overall psychosomatic burden and separate psychosomatic symptoms.

METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, we used data from 6248 girls and 7153 boys in south-east Sweden who turned 16 years of age during the academic years 2009/2010 to 2015/2016 and responded to a health questionnaire at the school health services. The association between overall healthy food intake and a low psychosomatic burden was calculated as odds ratios (95% confidence interval) and stratified for other lifestyle habits and gender.

RESULTS: Sixty-nine per cent of the boys and 35% of the girls had a low psychosomatic burden. There was a positive association between an overall healthy food intake and a low psychosomatic burden (P<0.0001), regardless of other lifestyle habits and gender. An overall healthy food intake was also positively associated with a lower frequency of the separate psychosomatic symptoms of concentration difficulties, sleep difficulties, a poor appetite or dizziness (P<0.0001).

CONCLUSIONS: A healthy food intake seems to be associated with a low psychosomatic burden among adolescents. Further knowledge is needed to explore whether an improved food intake can reduce psychosomatic symptoms and enhance mental health.

Background

Safe Environment for Every Kid (SEEK) is one of few evidence-based approaches to identify psychosocial problems and facilitate support to families within pediatric primary care. The Swedish version of SEEK, called BarnSäkert (“Child Safe”), is being evaluated as a complex intervention in the Swedish child health services (CHS) for children aged 0–6 years.

Objective

Assessment of parents’ views of the acceptability and efficacy of the BarnSäkert/SEEK model within the CHS in Sweden.

Participants and setting

Mothers and fathers (n = 353) whose children were enrolled in the CHS.

Methods

An anonymous web-based survey posed questions regarding how parents perceived BarnSäkert/SEEK and whether services had been offered, accessed or planned as a result. Efficacy was measured as parents’ reports of an improved life situation or having been helped by the model.

Results

Among parents who discussed their situation with the nurse, 80 % reported that it had helped, 24 % had received help that they otherwise would not have and 20 % that their situation had improved. Appropriateness of the model was scored at 91/100 by mothers and 86/100 by fathers. Logistic regression showed significantly higher odds ratios for efficacy measures and service uptake for parents who were younger, born outside of Sweden or had lower levels of education.

Conclusions

Parents reported that the model was highly acceptable and efficacious in meeting their psychosocial needs. The findings lend support for application of the BarnSäkert/SEEK model in the Swedish CHS as an equitable approach to address psychosocial problems in families with young children. 

AIM: This study aimed to investigate Child Health Services nurses' experiences of adjusting their parental support in response to parents' loneliness and concerns about their parenthood during the COVID-19 pandemic.

DESIGN: The study has a cross-sectional design based on self-reported data.

METHOD: The study is based on a study-specific questionnaire created by the research group and took place in the context of the Child Health Services in two regions of Sweden. All 180 eligible child health nurses were invited to answer the questionnaire, and 130 nurses answered the questionnaire. The questions with fixed answers were analysed using descriptive statistics, and those with free-text answers were analysed using content analysis.

RESULTS: The nurses described parental support as having partly changed during the pandemic; the nurses also described a lack of parental support in groups and how the group-based parental support was replaced with individual targeted visits. Further, the nurses stated that, in encounters with the Child Health Services during the pandemic, parents broadly expressed feeling lonely and isolated in their parenthood.

CONCLUSION: The results of this study can be used to develop parental support in child health services beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. The results shed light on the need for more person-centred parental support at the Child Health Services to avoid parents' feelings of loneliness on both an individual and a group level. The great importance of parenting support in groups highlights the significance of developing this form of parental support in Child Health Services to facilitate parents' feeling secure in their parenting and thus promote the child's health.

PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: No patient or public contribution.

BACKGROUND: All children should have the possibility to be healthy during childhood, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In Sweden, the Child Health Services (CHS) support all parents and children from birth until the age of six to promote children's health and development. Some Swedish regions have introduced an extended home-visit programme, with CHS nurses and social workers visiting first-time parents together to provide parental support in collaboration. The programme aims to expand the task of promoting the child's health and increase the possibilities of discovering risk factors in families earlier. The aim of the present study is to describe the professionals' experiences of collaboration when introducing the extended home-visit programme to a broader population within the frame of a family centre.

METHODS: The study used a reflexive thematic qualitative approach with focus group interviews. All staff at the family centre were invited to participate: CHS nurses, social workers, and managers who worked with the extended home-visit programme. Data were collected through focus group interviews with each profession separately and analysed through reflexive thematic analysis.

RESULTS: One overarching theme emerged: A key to facilitating early support. Three connected themes - Ease for everyone on the family's terms, From working alone to becoming a team, and A matter of supporting structures - illuminated the participants' experiences. Their driving force was early detection of risk factors or needs in the family, to be able to provide support. The collaboration was enhanced by the different professional competencies complementing each other. That all were located at the family centre together was also important to facilitate collaboration.

CONCLUSIONS: The extended home-visits were appreciated and experienced as useful by all participants. That a family centre organization already existed was one of the facilitators, functioning as a meeting point to expand the collaboration. The managers' support was essential, and it was experienced as positive that the organization invested resources to allow employees to participate in the development of the extended home-visit programmes. This way of working has the potential to add value for the children and families, and the CHS would benefit from using the extended home-visit programme further.

Background

The salutogenic theory forms the basis for health promotion and describes health as a continuum from a dis-ease pole of health to an ease pole. The core concept for the salutogenic theory is sense of coherence (SOC). For a strong SOC, general resistance resources, such as solid economic situation, are essential. The aim was to explore how people – despite self-reported economic difficulties – comprehend, manage and find it meaningful to achieve the level of physical activity recommended by World Health Organisation (WHO).

Method

The study is based on interviews with people achieving the recommended physical activity (PA) level despite economic difficulties. The interviews were conducted at primary health care centres and family centres after a targeted health dialogue. We used a qualitative deductive content analysis based on sense of coherence as the main category, with the three generic categories of comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness.

Result

The findings elucidate a pattern of a process. In this process, the participants comprehend their knowledge of the health benefits of PA and have a plan for performing their PA. They utilise their resources in order to manage to apply their knowledge and plan for PA in their lives despite their challenges. When PA becomes meaningful to them, they have an intrinsic motivation to perform it and experience its benefits.

Conclusion

This study suggests a possible process that might help in achieving the recommended PA level among people with economic difficulties and other challenges. The findings might be used in health promotion work, such as targeted health dialogues in primary health care, to reduce health inequalities when supporting people who are not achieving the recommended levels of PA.

Trial registration

Not applicable.

BACKGROUND: In Sweden, population-based targeted health dialogues are an important part of health promotion and disease prevention in primary health care. Targeted health dialogues are performed with a pedagogical approach to allow individuals to reflect over their resources, situation and motivation to change lifestyle habits together with a healthcare professional.

AIM: The aim of this study was to explore healthcare professionals' experiences of targeted health dialogues in primary health care.

METHODS: Three focus group interviews were conducted with 20 healthcare professionals. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

RESULTS: The main category A possibility to promote healthy behaviours and prevent disease describes how the targeted health dialogues were experienced as a valuable opportunity to promote health among inhabitants. The significance of the primary healthcare centre's health promotion and prevention strategies was emphasised to enable the targeted health dialogues as a part of the assignment to promote health. These strategies were expressed as shared focus and organisational space and support making it possible for example to reach all socioeconomic groups. The work with targeted health dialogue was described as a complex task requiring extensive competence. Furthermore, the pedagogical tool including the visual health profile was experienced to have an important impact on the dialogue offering direction for actions to promote health and prevent disease.

CONCLUSIONS: Targeted health dialogues can be a valuable opportunity for healthcare professionals in primary health care to promote a healthy lifestyle among inhabitants. Certain preconditions at both the meso- and the micro level is however required for this to come about.

BACKGROUND: The Safe Environment for Every Kid (SEEK) model was developed to address psychosocial risk factors (financial worries, depressive symptoms, major parental stress, alcohol misuse and intimate partner violence) in the pediatric primary care setting but has not been evaluated from the parents' perspective. To further investigate the usefulness of SEEK, it is important to explore how parents perceive the model.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to explore parents' perceptions of the SEEK model as a part of regular health visits in the Child Health Services in Sweden.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Eighteen parents (13 women and five men) in two Swedish counties participated in the study.

METHODS: Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted, and the resulting data were analyzed using reflective thematic analysis.

RESULTS: Three themes were identified: Acceptance and understanding of the SEEK model in the child health services, The questionnaire as a bridge to a dialogue, and Feeling trust in the system and the child health nurse's professional competence. Further, an overarching theme was created that encompassed a core meaning of all three themes; SEEK provides a process-oriented framework to receive support in parenting with a focus on child health.

CONCLUSIONS: The study showed that parents express both acceptance and understanding of the SEEK model and they perceive that the model provides an avenue for repeated dialogues about the family's situation during the child's upbringing and an opportunity to access support if needed.