Introduction:

fever is a common symptom during the infancy that causes stress and much anxiety in the care-givers due to their belief that fever is a deadly illness. Feverphobia is a term which express the parental and health professional´s fear when faced with child fever.

Objetive:

to determine the knowledge, attitudes and practices of parents and children caregivers (0-14 years old) that use the Emergency Department.

Patients and methods: observational, descriptive and transversal study; data were obtained from a sample by consecutive sampling of the parent and children caregivers who went to University Hospital Río Hortega emergency department in Valladolid because of fever. They had to complete a survey.

Results:

124 questionnaires were analyzed. 60.5% of those were completed by mothers. 42.7% had high studies and 74% worked. Fever was mainly measured with electronic thermometers (82.3%). The armpit was the preferred location to take the temperature (76%). Physical measures (25.8%) and antipyretics (24.2%) were used for the most part to lower the fever. A statistically significant (p < 0.05) relation between academic level and the use of measures to lower the fever (p = 0.028) was observed, as in the academic level and the hazardous fever beliefs (p = 0.016).

Conclusions:

in this study, we observed that feverphobia tends to appear due to lack of awareness. A deficit in the caregiver knowledge facing fever was observed.

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