The impact of fever health education on clinic utilization

We evaluated the ability of an office health education program to (1) increase parental knowledge about fever in children, (2) improve parental satisfaction with services, and (3) affect the number of fever-associated clinic visits. Randomly selected experimental and control groups differed only in that the former group viewed a slide-tape presentation. Testing of population samples before and after the presentation disclosed a highly significant improvement in knowledge about fever in the experimental population that persisted for almost 6 months. Monitoring of subsequent clinic visits revealed a 30% to 35% decrease in visits for fever and a 20% to 25% decrease in all visits for acute problems. These findings suggest that an audiovisual health education intervention can significantly improve patient confidence in managing fever as reflected by decreased clinic visits. This program is potentially useful in both the office and clinic in a health maintenance organization setting.