Mother Approaches to Children with Fever

Abstract

Objective: Fever, one of the most common symptoms of childhood, is a complaint that the families worried about the most. The families want to know its reason, and it constitutes a significant part of visits to emergency department. In this study, it has been aimed to investigate the knowledge, attitude, antipyretic drug status of the families who bring their children with the complaint of fever, the doses of antipyretic drug and the factors affecting them. Methods : The mothers of 300 children without known chronic disease, who were brought to the Children's Emergency Department of our hospital with complaints of fever between 1-31 March and between the hours of 08:00 to 16:00 and who agreed to complete a questionnaire, were included in the study. Results: One hundred and twenty-seven (42.3%), 173 (57.7%) and 52% of 300 patients enrolled in the study were female, male and under the age of three, respectively. It has been determined that 96% of mothers thought that fever was harmful to children and the cause of the most common fear due to fever for 95% of them was the risk of febrile convulsion. As the level of education of mothers was increasing, the rate of measuring the temperature at home was found to be higher (p = 0.01). It has been observed that more than half of the mothers measured the temperature once an hour, but the frequency of temperature measurement was independent of mothers' education level (p = 0.76). It has been determined that the statistical rate of giving antipyretic with the recommendation of a doctor significantly increased as the maternal education level decreased (p < 0.01). The rate of usingantibiotics without a doctor's recommendation was significantly higher in mothers having sons than mothers having daughters (p = 0.02). Conclusion: It has been determined that the fear of fever was common in mothers; this concern has negatively affected the state of children with fever, increased unnecessary visits and unnecessary treatments of the emergency department. Health workers should inform the mothers one to one about fever during hospital admission in order to rectify this situation caused by the mothers’ lack of knowledge. In addition, the fear of mothers about fever may be reduced by using the mass media with the help of health education programs, which will be organized, by reaching more people and this contributes to the prevention of erroneous procedures. However, more studies are needed to be conducted on how all of these information and training should be done and the effectiveness of these initiatives.