Abstracts

Rationale: The diagnosis of childhood epilepsy is often accompanied by fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. However, families who receive adequate information experience greater satisfaction with their care and decreased anxiety and stress (Gordon & Crisp, 2016). While health literature focuses on the need for epilepsy education for families and healthcare providers, dedicated pediatric epilepsy program websites in Canada do not exist. Inadequate information may result in families and healthcare providers underutilizing hospital epilepsy resources. Families and team members of the Pediatric Epilepsy Program identified the need for a program website in order to provide the most accurate and reliable information.  Methods: A quality improvement framework, Plan-Do-Act-Study was implemented to design and evaluate a new pediatric epilepsy program website. A focus group was formed to determine key components, ease of use, and content development. The focus group consisted of a pediatric epilepsy nurse, a community epilepsy educator, a bedside pediatric nurse, a pediatric epileptologist, and two family advisors who have children with epilepsy. Using the Knowledge Translation process, the content for the website was created and reviewed by the focus group and then populated to the Children’s Hospital Website. The major sections of the website are Program Information, resources, tests, and treatment options. The website was then advertised to the public via hospital sources and community agencies.   Results: Matomo analytics were run retrospectively for the first 6 months (November 2018-April 2019) after the website went live to determine the number of visitors accessing it. Total number of visits each month were November-612; December-335; January-1,195; February-558; March-613; and April-755. These results showed an increase in use over time. Individual content pages most popular over the 6 months were Our Team (17%), Comprehensive Epilepsy Clinic (9%), Pediatric Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (13%), and MRI (9%). The contents were divided into four themes: program information (35%), resources (17%), tests (25%), and treatment options (23%).  Conclusions: A local pediatric epilepsy website increases access to reputable and reliable information to both families and children living with epilepsy and healthcare providers. The website has the potential to grow concurrently with the program as new services such as the combined comprehensive epilepsy/genetics clinc and epilepsy/transition clinics are developed. The website is also a potential venue for family testimonials on their epilepsy journey. Funding: No funding