Time out based discipline strategy for children's non-compliance with cystic fibrosis treatment

Abstract

Purpose. To evaluate a time out based discipline strategy designed to decrease treatment avoidance in children with cystic fibrosis (CF) who displayed non-compliant behaviour to their parents' treatment requests.Method. A single-subject reversal design was used to compare baseline compliance when a time out based discipline strategy was in effect. Outcome measures included observational assessments of compliance, parent ratings of child treatment-related behaviour problems and parent reported preference for the time out strategy.Results. Greater compliance was demonstrated when the time out strategy was in place. Parents reported fewer treatment-related behaviour problems and desired less professional help for these problems upon completion of the study and reported preferring the time out discipline strategy to their typical child management strategy.Conclusions. This discipline strategy represents a practical and appealing brief intervention that is shown to help parents maximise their children's participation in life-extending treatments. This intervention minimises the need for parent-therapist interaction, which may be of particular importance to families of patients with CF who already devote significant time to medical appointments and interventions. The preliminary nature of this data and lack of reversal for one of the participants emphasise the need for additional research to replicate the findings.