Journal article
Parents’ concerns and beliefs about temperature measurement in children: a qualitative study
- Abstract:
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Background
Nearly 40% of parents with children aged 6 to 17 months consult a healthcare professional when their child has a high temperature. Clinical guidelines recommend temperature measurement in these children, but little is known about parents’ experiences of and beliefs about temperature measurement. This study aimed to explore parents’ concerns and beliefs about temperature measurement in children.
Methods
Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted from May 2017 to June 2018 with 21 parents of children aged 4 months to 5.5 years, who were purposively sampled from the METRIC study (a method comparison study comparing non-contact infrared thermometers to axillary and tympanic thermometers in acutely ill children). Data analysis followed a thematic approach.
Results
Parents described the importance of being able to detect fever, in particular high fevers, and how this then influenced their actions. The concept of “accuracy” was valued by parents but the aspects of performance which were felt to reflect accuracy varied. Parents used numerical values of temperature in four main ways: determining precision of the thermometer on repeat measures, detecting a “bad” fever, as an indication to administer antipyretics, or monitoring response to treatment. Family and social networks, the internet, and medical professionals and resources, were all key sources of advice for parents regarding fever, and guiding thermometer choice.
Conclusions
Temperature measurement in children has diagnostic value but can either empower, or cause anxiety and practical challenges for parents. This represents an opportunity for both improved communication between parents and healthcare professionals, and technological development, to support parents to manage febrile illness with greater confidence in the home.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 572.7KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1186/s12875-020-01355-y
Authors
- Publisher:
- BioMed Central
- Journal:
- BMC Family Practice More from this journal
- Volume:
- 22
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 9-9
- Article number:
- 9
- Publication date:
- 2021-01-07
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-12-16
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1471-2296
- ISSN:
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1471-2296
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1152598
- UUID:
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uuid_3c6fdd19-9610-4ea8-aa87-143c3dff91ce
- Local pid:
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pubs:1152598
- Deposit date:
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2021-01-08
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Morris et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- ©2021 The Author(s). Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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