Caring for a child with a lower respiratory tract infection: Parents' perspectives.

Only private healthcare settings were used, so the views of families relying on public care, where resources and care pathways differ, are missing. All participants were mothers, so fathers, grandparents and other caregivers are not represented. Every child was under three and had nasopharyngeal suctioning, so parents of older children or children who had different treatment may describe something different. Parents were recruited only once their child was already receiving physiotherapy, which the authors note biases the sample towards families who seek professional help. The interviews were about 30 minutes long and each sub-theme rests on very few responses, so the numbers behind each theme are small and the paper did not record whether the mothers were employed.

The paper states the research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. No competing interests are declared in the supplied text. Ethical clearance came from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Do not read this as evidence for or against chest physiotherapy. These are 12 mothers' accounts of their experience, not a test of whether treatment works; the paper itself notes that routine chest physiotherapy is unnecessary, and every parent here was recruited only after their child had already been referred for it, so these are the views of families who accepted it.