Parental management of children's fever: Assessment of knowledge and use of health record information.

INTRODUCTION

To assess parents' knowledge regarding how to deal with children's fever in comparison to the updated recommendations published in 2016 by the HAS and to collect their views on the fever advice card of the 2006 health record to offer suggestions for possible improvements in order to disseminate the message.

METHODS

Observational, descriptive, quantitative national study conducted with an online questionnaire among adult parents with children born between 2006 and 2017 who had a French health record.

RESULTS

A total of 3295 parents were included from 03/12/2017 to 04/02/2018. The concordance of knowledge compared to current recommendations has improved in 10 years, especially regarding physical treatment (31% of parents had all the right answers) and drugs (95% paracetamol monotherapy). Shortcomings mainly concern the definition of fever, the idea that the temperature is correlated with severity, and the lack of knowledge of the sign of severity "age less than 3 months." The use of the fever advice card in the health record is limited (33% of parents only). They approve by a large majority its promotion and the standardization of the message of healthcare professionals.

CONCLUSIONS

The improvement of how parents manage their child's fever first requires an update of the knowledge of healthcare professionals to homogenize their messages and practices. One of their essential roles is to inform parents of the existence of the fever advice card updated in the 2018 health record, which most particularly contains information that remains poorly known by parents. The health record should be the medium of dialogue with families to promote children's health.