Discharge against medical advice from a Mission tertiary hospital, South-West, Nigeria.

BACKROUND: The fiduciary duty of a managing physician makes paediatric discharges against medical advice (DAMA) particularly challenging as children lack the legal power or authority to make their health decisions. Aim: It is aimed in the present study to determine the prevalence of paediatric DAMA in a mission tertiary hospital. METHODS: This was a prospective descriptive study carried out from June 2018 to May 2019 among paediatric inpatients at the Bowen University Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso, Nigeria whose parent/ care giver signed DAMA, despite adequate counselling. Data was analysed using SPSS version 23. RESULTS: The prevalence of DAMA in the study was of 4.1%, and the neonatal group accounted for the largest bulk of DAMA. Birth asphyxia was the commonest diagnosis among this group. There was a slight female predominance among the patients whose parents signed DAMA. Financial constraint was the commonest reason [13(30.2%)] given for DAMA and none of the children whose parents signed DAMA was enrolled on the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). CONCLUSION: Rate of DAMA in a private mission tertiary hospital was lower than previously reported from government tertiary hospitals in the present-day Nigeria.

Knowledge, utilization, and accessibility of child welfare card among caregivers in a tertiary center in South West Nigeria.

BACKGROUND: The Child Welfare Card (CWC) contains the records of a child's immunization and information on the other aspects of the child's health, including growth curves and home treatment of diarrheal disease to mention a few. How easily retrievable these records are and what influence the cards have on parents/caregivers regarding the child's nurture are uncertain in our environment. AIM: The present study was aimed at assessing the parents/caregivers' knowledge and utilization of CWCs as well as the health-providers' accessibility of the card in the hospital. METHOD: This study was a cross-sectional descriptive one that involved the parents/caregivers of children aged 60 months and below, attending the children's clinics and wards in a tertiary center. We collected the relevant information, including the sociodemographic data of the parents/caregivers, their knowledge, and assessed the utilization of CWC. The analysis of the categorical data was performed with the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (S.P.S.S) version 23.0 for windows. P values < 0.05 were considered significant. RESULTS: Of the 377 parents/caregivers enrolled in the study, good knowledge of the contents of the CWC was demonstrated by 82 (21.8%) while 78 (20.7%) made the cards available to the health care providers. Eighty (21.2%) made adequate use of the cards at home. A greater number of parents/caregivers from the higher social class had good knowledge of the intervention contents of the CWC (P = 0.005). The accessibility of the cards to the health care-providers was significantly higher among the older parents/caregivers (P = 0.010), those with a good knowledge of CWC (P = 0.020) and parents/caregivers from higher social class (P = 0.001). Subjects with good knowledge were 2.4 times (OR = 2.4, 95% CI = 1.4-4.2) more likely to utilize the intervention contents in the CWC. CONCLUSION: The overall knowledge, utilization, and accessibility of the CWC were poor. Parents/caregivers with good knowledge were more likely to utilize the information on the CWC compared with participants with poor knowledge.