| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立台北護理學院 === 護理研究所 === 98 === Due to the fear of complications caused by fever, parents may have improper management to their child with a fever. Previous studies called this phenomenon as “fever phobia”, and found the parents' beliefs and management regarding fever were different in various races. The purpose of this study was to investigate the fever knowledge and management of the native and the immigrant mothers with an infant in Taiwan. A convenience sampling was used to recruit mothers with less than 1 year-old baby from Taiwan, mainland China and Vietnam. These mothers responded a questionnaire and the data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and Chi-square tests.
The result related to knowledge showed that most mothers defined a fever as temperature between 37.5℃ and 38℃ and a high fever as temperature between 38.5℃ and 39℃. Around 79% of mothers thought the body temperature would be raised constantly if not giving any medicine. They were concerned about the complications of fever such as brain damage, seizure, dehydration, coma and death. More than half of mothers from mainland China and Vietnam did not realize that fever could strengthen the ability of babies to resist bacterial infection. In the case of fever management, all mothers treated babies with seeing a doctor, drinking more water or breast milk, removing clothes, taking a sponge bath or a tepid water bath and giving the antipyretics. Furthermore, more than 80% of mothers from Taiwan chose to observe their babies at home. In contrast, a small part of mothers used improper management to their febrile babies. For example, Taiwanese mothers usually gave a sponge bath, a bath with cold water, and a diluted sports drink, honey water or glucose water to their febrile baby. Mothers from mainland China preferred to reduce the body temperature of babies by wiping with alcohol. In Vietnam, a unique fever treatment was to feed the baby with lemon water adding salt. Siu-gian ritual and Fu-Shui were exclusively used as the fever management in Taiwan and mainland China groups. As for medicine, acetaminophen and ibuprofen, mainly coming from clinics and hospitals, were two common uses for relieving fever. More than 60% of mothers followed the doctor’s prescription. The majority of mothers in the three ethnic groups showed to give their babies antipyretic when their body temperature was higher than 38℃. However, 27.9% of mothers (mostly mainland China and Vietnam) still treated their babies whose body temperature was less than 38℃ with antipyretic.
The results of the study can help the health professionals to be aware of the similarities and the differences of fever knowledge and management in these three ethnic groups. Besides, this study showed that the sources of knowledge related to fever mainly were from physicians and nurses. Therefore, it is important that the health professionals should reduce the fever phobia through the health education, and avoid the injuries from the mother’s improper management.
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