Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the efficacy and safety of tutorial videos in empowering caregivers and reducing health care utilization for acutely ill children. Significantly more caregivers in the intervention group who received video tutorials reported high self-efficacy and had reduced health care utilization compared with controls, who received telephone triage. Although not reaching the expected 5% increase in self-efficacy, the 4.4% increase can be considered acceptable as the intervention also reduced health care utilization without increasing adverse outcomes. The impact of the intervention on the individual self-efficacy items appeared to differ, suggesting that the videos were not effective in helping parents in the practical challenges they were encountering with their ill child, but were beneficial in more general terms, potentially empowering caregivers in future situations.Previous studiesOur study had a unique setup, as the intervention preceded a medical consultation and included data on caregivers’ reported self-efficacy and health care utilization through telephone triage, hospital medical records, and self-reported visits to the general practitioner. Moreover, the video tutorials were feasible for widespread online distribution.Our findings revealed that approximately one-third of children assessed at the hospital had mild symptoms and did not require treatment or tests, while one-fifth received nonprescription medicine (