Study of Parental Beliefs and Practices about Childhood Fever in a Multicultural Population of Thrace, Greece

Introduction and purpose: The aims of this study are to investigate parents' attitudes towards fever in their children andthe common fears related to it andpossibly correlate these to socio-demographic characteristics.Materials and Methods: We interviewed 316 parents, whose children attended the paediatric emergency department, using an appropriately-structured questionnaire, between January and March 2011. Data were analysed with the statistical software SPSS v17. The statistical significance of the results was tested using Chi-square and the Fisher's exact test. The significance level of all tests was p< 0.05.Results: Parents of lower educational level are more likely to take their febrile children to the hospital as soon as fever is detected. Illiterate and primary-school educated parents also tend to administer antipyretics at a lower temperature and take more often inappropriate measures apart from antipyretics, eg sponge the child with vinegar, recommended by their grandparents. Parents fear that fever may cause seizures (53.7%), permanent neurological damage (22%), heart stroke (4,5%) and death (3,7%). 14% of the parents fear that fever is the symptom of an underlying serious infection (meningitis or encephalitis). Parental fears are not directly related with parents' education and with the child's age.Conclusions: Parents still demonstrate unrealistic approaches to fever and experience undue fears. Health personnel should organise educational programmes in order to address them effectively.