The outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019 has now spread to all parts of the world(Kickbusch & Leung, 2020). There is also a growing trend of infection among children, and some severe cases of infection and neonatal cases have been reported. The World Health Organization has officially named the disease coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was classified as an international public health emergency on 30 January 2020(Razai et al., 2020). It has become one of the major infectious diseases that seriously endangers people’s health and public safety after the SARS outbreak in 2003(Yang et al., 2017). Novel coronavirus pneumonia has been declared a class B infectious disease by the China International CDC, and prevention and control measures for class A infectious diseases have been undertaken. By the beginning of April 2020, more than 2.0 million people in the world had been infected with SARS-CoV-2.

In China, currently, the physician–patient relationship has reached an unprecedented level of tension. Physician–patient conflicts occur in various forms, including violent attacks on individuals and disruption of clinical work. The lack of medical resources for children makes the contradiction between doctors and patients more prominent. The pediatric clinic is responsible for receiving all children with fever and completing nucleic acid testing. So it is a window into the hospital and the first line of defence against SARS-CoV-2. The outpatient Department of Paediatrics receives a large number of mobile children every day, not only to make contact with the children but also to contact more parents(RK et al., 2018). Because of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, parents are in a state of extreme psychological tension. Most parents are worried, anxious, easily excited, and not calm during the treatment of their children, because they feared of not getting effective treatment or getting covid. Parents tend to vent their anxious emotions on the medical staff, and they are prone to display a sense of distrust towards the medical staff. This kind of situation can easily affect the normal order of paediatric outpatient services, resulting in a large number of children and parents gathering, which can easily cause cross infection of SARS-CoV-2 and also seriously affect the physical and mental health of children(Benoit, 2013). Therefore, in view of this situation, we analysed and summarized the psychological status of 18 000 parents who visited our paediatric clinic. We hope to further improve the quality of medical care, reduce the occurrence of doctor-patient conflicts and ensure the normal medical environment of children through the psychological analysis of parents of children.

1. Data and methods

2. Analysis of the different behaviours and psychological characteristics of the children’s family members

2.1 Different behaviours

We found that during the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak, parents who came to the outpatient Department of Paediatrics in our hospital had more emotional instability, and we also found that the normal treatment process seldom occurred. These manifestations included: refusing to pay (0.24%), requesting earlier access (4.43%), refusing to transfer to the fever clinic (1.17%), refusing to allow testing to detect nucleic acids (10.39%), and refusing to transfer to designated hospitals (0.01%). (Table 1).

Psychological characteristics of parents in a Paediatric Outpatient during the SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic

All authors

Xuemei Li & Xiaobin Wu

https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2020.1849747

Published online:

17 November 2020

Table 1. Parents’ different behaviours in the outpatient paediatric department during the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic

CSVDisplay Table

2.2 Different emotions

With the outbreak of the epidemic and its spread to all parts of the country, people’s fear of SARS-CoV-2 infection also increased. Generally, all parents of children who came to see a doctor showed unstable emotions about SARS-CoV-2 infection. The emotion was mainly anxiety (25.67%) . (Table 2).

Psychological characteristics of parents in a Paediatric Outpatient during the SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic

All authors

Xuemei Li & Xiaobin Wu

https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2020.1849747

Published online:

17 November 2020

Table 2. Parents’ different emotional characteristics in the outpatient paediatric department during the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic

CSVDisplay Table

3. Conclusion

Due to travel control, home isolation, and concerns about the risk of infection in medical institutions, it is difficult for children to come to the hospital to receive a diagnosis and treatment for conditions such as asthma, epilepsy, kidney disease, short stature and other chronic diseases. Parents may be upset and anxious during the treatment of their children. These emotions will affect the children at the same time, resulting in sadness, grievance, helplessness, anxiety and other emotions.

Our analysis found that among parents, women show more anxiety than men during treatment, which may be related to the emotional experience and expression of women, and that they are more inclined to express fear and anxiety(Mclean & Anderson, 2009). Compared with young people, elderly people over 50 years of age are more nervous and have more difficulty communicating, which may be related to the elderly people’s slower thinking and difficulty in understanding some concepts(Cingi et al., 2015). In addition, some of elderly people have hearing loss and cannot clearly hear what nurses are saying(Orbelo et al., 2005). At this time, elderly people are more prone to anxiety. All of these parents need our nurses to have more patience and exhibit more tolerance in their work and to fully understand the needs and psychology of elderly people. Fortunately, although some parents show anxiety in the process of medical treatment, few people have engaged in behaviours that affect the normal medical treatment process, which may be closely related to the improvements of people’s education level and the popularization of law.

In conclusion, as the first line of defence for children’s health protection, the paediatric outpatient clinic has a great responsibility. To do a good job in the psychological care of parents is a very important step to ensure the normal order of outpatient treatment and the timely diagnosis and treatment of children. The nurses need to always follow the principles of active reception, active guidance and active coordination to help children and their parents, grasp their psychological needs as much as possible, capture their emotional responses, and solve their urgent problems. Accurately grasping the psychological characteristics of parents, adopting personalized nursing methods, and achieving warm and meticulous psychological care are essential. Listening to parents, making careful inquiries, and ensuring good and stable moods of the nurses ensure that children and their parents have a full sense of trust and security in the hospital, which can not only improve the doctor-patient relationship but also help to maintain the normal process of medical treatment and diagnosis during the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic.