OC42 - What do parents know about fever?

Theme: Parenting/parenthood.

Due to lack of information, the fever in the child brings anxiety and fear to their parents.

To identify parents' knowledge towards the child with fever and the sources of information they have used.

Cross-sectional, descriptive-correlational study. Convenience not probabilistic sample of 360 parents with children in child health surveillance consultation, in central Portugal. Data collection was performed by a questionnaire about fever in children.

Knowledge of the fever was found to be weak among parents aged * 38 years (36.2%) with a partner (77.0%), living in rural areas (69.3%) and having completed the ninth grade (53.9%). Parents up to 37 years (68.2%) with a partner (89.0%), living in urban area (53.0%) and having higher education (43.3%) showed good knowledge. The main sources of information were the doctor (65.8%) and nurses (50.6%).

Nurses need to invest in training parents more on this subject.