Health care providers counselling of caregivers on their children’s condition at Usmanu Danfodiyo university teaching hospital, Sokoto, North-Western Nigeria

Introduction: Counselling of caregivers about common childhood diseases is an importantcomponent of health care services. Objective: To assess the quality of counselling offered tocaregivers on their children’s condition by health care providers at Usmanu Danfodiyo UniversityTeaching Hospital (UDUTH), Sokoto. Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study carried out from1st August 2015 to 30th April 2016. Caregivers with children less than 15 years of age seen in theunits of Paediatric Department of UDUTH, Sokoto, were consecutively interviewed. Thecorresponding case notes of their children were reviewed to obtain data on the child’s diagnosis andto check whether the attending physicians have documented the content of the counselling offeredto caregivers. Results: A total of 420 caregivers were interviewed. Their mean age was 28.9±8.6years (range of 15-64 years). Only 218 (51.9%) caregivers were counselled, but there was nodocumentation of the content of counselling in the case notes of their children. 81 (37.2%) of thediagnosis mentioned by caregivers did not tally with the one documented in the case notes of theirchildren (p=0.0001). Conclusion: This study revealed inadequate counselling of caregivers on theirchildren condition and poor counselling practices among healthcare providers in UDUTH, Sokoto.Hence, there is the need for training and retraining of healthcare providers on counselling ofcaregivers on their children condition in the hospital.