The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7396 p435
15 April 2006

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Half of parents give their children incorrect doses of antipyretics

More than half of children with fever are given incorrect doses of antipyretics by their parents, according to a literature review published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing this month (2006;54:217).

Researchers reviewed studies published worldwide over the past 20 years that looked at parent’s knowledge of fever, their attitudes towards it and their practices in managing childhood fever.

The researchers found that, although there has been some improvement in correct pyretic dosing over the past two decades, overdosing has almost trebled (from 12 per cent to 33 per cent).

Alternating antipyretics is the latest parental method of controlling fever and this introduces another avenue for incorrect dosing, say the researchers. A study in 2000 reported that parents incorrectly dosed children with one or both of paracetamol and ibuprofen, with 14 out of 200 children receiving alternating antipyretics and only one child receiving correct doses of both. The review also reveals that parents’ knowledge about normal body temperature and the temperature that defines fever is poor, with mild fever classified as high fever. Negative attitudes towards mild fever persist despite numerous reports of the benefits of mild to moderate fever in the literature.

Evidence suggests that controlled educational interventions have reduced parents’ unnecessary use of health care services and improved their knowledge about fever, say the researchers. However, they suggest that in order to change behaviour in the general population there is a need to target parents’ attitudes, intentions and practices towards, not only their knowledge about, fever. The researchers also note that health care professionals’ concerns about the harmful effects of fever continue to be reported. “Health education is a responsibility of all health care professionals. Fever education must be based on the latest scientific evidence, and professionals’ attitudes toward the benefits of mild to moderate fever must be positive,” they say.