Funding outcome

Family satisfaction is key to patient and family-centred care. Unfortunately, emergency departments are often very stressful for families, due to the busy environment, worry about their health, and the fact that most emergency department visits are unplanned. Caregivers are extremely important to their children's experience in the pediatric emergency department, as their emotions and reactions influence their child 's experience and memories. Previous smaller studies have looked at the information needs of caregivers with respect to medical knowledge, but the needs of families, specifically children, have not been well described for emotional and physical needs, nor related to their socio-economic status or knowledge of their health. Understanding the specific needs of families, for both the caregivers and the children, is vital to providing responsive and family-engaged, family-centred care. We will survey caregivers and children across Canada's pediatric emergency departments to better understand families' needs when they are being seen in an emergency deparment. We will use this information to then inform the development of local programs to improve the education, care and attention that families receive, as well as increase family engagement and participation in this setting. This study will be a 'proof of concept' for a future larger scale national study that will benchmark current pediatric emergency department standards, with broader quality of life, cost avoidance and health system sustainability implications.