Mothers' Management of Their Children with Fever at Primary Health Care Centers in Port Said City

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 1Professor of Pediatric Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, Port Said University.

2 Lecturer of Pediatric Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, Port Said University

3 pediatric nursing

Abstract

        Background: Children frequently complain of fever when they see doctors. Parents worry about fever and believe it is a disease rather than an illness symptom. Mothers treat fever differs according their background and expertise. Meanwhile, nursing research indicates that care of feverish children is not supported by the most scientific data. Aimed to: Assess mothers' management of their children with fever at primary health care centers in Port Said City. Subjects and method: Design: descriptive research. Setting: The primary healthcare facilities in Port Said City, Egypt, were the site of current investigation. Subjects:320 women who manage their children's fever in the aforementioned environment made up the convenience sample, which was recruited over a 4-month period. Tools: two tools were utilized. First tool included two parts that concerned with gathering information on the sociodemographic features of the mothers, an evaluation of the mothers' knowledge of fever and its management, second tool illustrated an evaluation of the mothers' reported practices for fever management by using observational checklists. The Results: The study showed that majority (65% &75.6 %) of women who were evaluated had inadequate knowledge and practices respectively, while 22.5% of them had good practices for managing fever. Conclusion: Majority of mothers' knowledge and practices regarding the management of fevers were inadequate and unsatisfactory, and most of them overused fever medications. Recommendation: All mothers visiting pediatric health facilities should be given dependable, evidence-based information regarding managing fever and proper antipyretic usage, also awareness campaigns and creation of illustrated posters and pamphlets.

Keywords


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