Evaluation of Fever-Related Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Mothers of Children with Chronic Diseases: A Descriptive Study

Abstract

Purpose: This research was conducted in a descriptive design to evaluate the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the mothers of hospitalized children with chronic diseases about fever. Methods: The study was conducted with the mothers of hospitalized children with a chronic disease in the pediatric clinics of a university hospital between 01 September 2018 and 28 February 2019. Considering the frequency as 50%, and the deviation as 0.05, the sample size was calculated as 384 mothers, and this number was increased to 400. The data were collected with the face-to-face survey method investigating the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of mothers about fever, with the consent of the mothers first. Results: According to the results, 55.0% of the mothers had primary school or below education, and 30.0% knew normal body temperature. The temperature was measured by touching the forehead of the child (49.6%) by mothers with primary school or below education level, and with a thermometer (73.5%) by those with a university degree. 74.8% took their child to a health institution on the first day of fever. When the fever increased, 33.7% and 18.3% of the mothers first took off the child’s clothes and gave medication to reduce the fever, respectively. Health personnel were the sources of information about the harms of fever for 52.5% of the mothers. Conclusion: Our study revealed that mothers’ anxiety about fever is common, and their anxiety negatively affects their approach to the child with fever, which ultimately leads to unnecessary hospital admissions.

Keywords

• Mothers
• fever
• knowledge
• child
• chronic disease
• attitude

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