Introduction: A previous study published by the authors showed that a single intervention could not change the baseline attitudes towards neurotrauma prevention. The present study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of multiple interventions for modifying knowledge and attitudes in the prevention of neurotrauma in Brazilian pre-teens and adolescents.
Methods: In a randomized controlled trial, fifth year primary school (PS) and second year high school (HS) students were divided into a control and two intervention (single/multiple) groups. The study was conducted in the following 8 stages: (T1) questionnaire to measure baseline characteristics, (T2) lecture on trauma prevention, (T3) reapplying the questionnaire used in T1, (T4) Traffic Department intervention, (T5) A play about trauma and its consequences, (T6) Fire Department intervention, (T7) Emergency Medical Service intervention, (T8) reapplying the questionnaire used in T1 and T3. Positive answers were considered the students who use safety devices “always or sometimes” and negative as “never” use safety devices.
Results: The sample consisted of 535 students. Regarding attitudes, students in all groups at any stage of measurement, showed protective behavior over 95% of the time about seat belt use. There were only differences between attitudes in PS and HS students on T8 assessment concerning the use of safety equipment on bikes in the multiple intervention group and the use of safety equipment on skateboards and rollerblades in single and multiple intervention groups. These differences were caused mainly by the reduction of positive answers by the HS group, rather than by the increase of positive or protective answers by the PS group. However, there was no difference when the control and intervention groups were compared, independent of the attitudes or the student groups studied. The most important reason for not using protection devices was the belief that they would not get hurt.
Conclusions: Multiple and different types of educational interventions, such as lectures, scenes of plays about trauma and its consequences, traffic and fire department intervention and medical emergency intervention directed to pre-teens and adolescents from public and private schools did not modify most of the attitudes towards prevention of injury of the pre-teens and adolescents.
Patient Care: We performed lectures in order to very if multiple interventions were able to modify attitudes regarding prevention of neurotrauma. We were able to change knowledge, however the children did not modified attitudes.
Learning Objectives: A previous study published by the authors showed that a single intervention could not change the baseline attitudes towards neurotrauma prevention. The present study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of multiple interventions for modifying knowledge and attitudes in the prevention of neurotrauma in Brazilian pre-teens and adolescents.