Principles of temperature monitoring.

Maintaining optimum body temperature is essential to life, and taking and recording a patient's temperature is a fundamental nursing skill. Deviation from the normal range of body temperature can be an important clinical indicator of altered physiological status requiring further investigation. Correct technique and careful recording are important for accuracy because clinicians rely on clinical observations to make diagnoses and decide on treatment. Nurses need to be able to interpret single stand-alone temperature recordings as well as sequential pattern recordings in the context of safe and acceptable physiological boundaries.