The impact of mother's roles towards preventing home injury in preschool children in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract

Context: Preschool children are the age group known to be susceptible to home injury. Although numerous occurrences of home injury were considered trivial, the unfortunate ones could lead to permanent disability. Aims: This study aimed to examine mothers' roles and its impact towards preventing home injury in preschool children. Settings and Design: A cross sectional study was conducted among mothers who sought treatment at various government maternal and child health clinics in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Simple random sampling technique was used in selecting the clinics. All mothers who met the inclusion criteria were approached on the day of data collection at the respective clinics. Methods and Material: A sample of 500 mothers completed a self-administered questionnaire to determine parenting styles, injury prevention practices and home injury occurrence in children. Home injury was defined as mother's self-reported home injury that happened to their preschool children within two weeks of data collection. Statistical analysis used: Descriptive analysis and inferential statistics were done using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0. Results: Majority of mothers practiced laxness-parenting style (mean (SD): 3.70 (0.87)) with higher proportion (84.0 %) of mothers allowed their preschool children to be left alone in the bathroom. Both laxness-parenting styles (p = 0.007) and poor injury prevention practices (p = 0.003) significantly associated with home injury occurrence in preschool children. Conclusions: Advocacy on the importance of supervision practice among mothers is essential to reduce the potential of neglect incidence that may promotes home injury in children.