Randomised controlled trial of an intervention to improve parental knowledge and management practices of fever

Kelly, Maria; Sahm, Laura J.; McCarthy, Suzanne; O'Sullivan, Ronan; McGillicuddy, Aoife; Shiely, Frances

Randomised controlled trial of an intervention to improve parental knowledge and management practices of fever

dc.contributor.author	Kelly, Maria
dc.contributor.author	Sahm, Laura J.
dc.contributor.author	McCarthy, Suzanne
dc.contributor.author	O'Sullivan, Ronan
dc.contributor.author	McGillicuddy, Aoife
dc.contributor.author	Shiely, Frances
dc.contributor.funder	Health Research Board	en
dc.date.accessioned	2019-12-09T11:27:34Z
dc.date.available	2019-12-09T11:27:34Z
dc.date.issued	2019-11-19
dc.description.abstract	Background: We know that parents require resources which can assist them to improve fever knowledge and management practices. The purpose of this study, using an RCT, was to examine the effectiveness of an information leaflet at increasing parental knowledge of fever, specifically temperature definition. Methods: A prospective, multi-centre, randomised, two-parallel arm, controlled trial with blinded outcome ascertainment was conducted. Parents presenting at purposively selected healthcare facilities who had a child aged ≤5 years of age were invited to participate. An information leaflet for use in the trial was designed based on previous studies with parents. Parents in the intervention arm read an information leaflet on fever and management of fever in children, completed a short questionnaire at Time 1 (T1) and again 2 weeks after randomisation at Time 2 (T2). Parents in the control arm did not receive the fever information leaflet but completed the same questionnaire as the intervention arm at T1 and againat T2. The primary outcome was the correct definition of fever (higher than ≥38 °C). Results: A total of 100 parents participated in the study at T1. A greater proportion of the intervention group (76%) than the control group (28%) selected the correct temperature (≥38 °C) at T1. 76% of the intervention arm correctly identified “higher than ≥38°C” as the temperature at which a fever is said to be present compared to 28% of the control arm. After 2 weeks, there was an increase of 6% of parents in the intervention arm (increase to 82.4%) who gave the correct temperature compared to just a 2.8% increase in the control arm (increase to 30.8%). Univariate logistic regression showed that parents in the intervention arm were significantly more likely to give the correct answer at both time-points (T1: OR 8.1; CI 95% 3.3–19.9: p < 0.01; T2: OR 10.5; CI 95% 3.4–32.0: p < 0.01). Conclusions: Our RCT of this simple educational intervention has been shown to improve parental understanding of fever knowledge and correct management strategies. Education interventions providing simple, clear information is a key step to decreasing parental mismanagement of fever and febrile illness in children.	en
dc.description.status	Peer reviewed	en
dc.description.version	Published Version	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.articleid	447	en
dc.identifier.citation	Kelly, M., Sahm, L., McCarthy, S., O’Sullivan, R., Mc Gillicuddy, A. and Shiely, F. (2019) 'Randomised controlled trial of an intervention to improve parental knowledge and management practices of fever', BMC Pediatrics, 19(1), 447. (10pp.) doi: 10.1186/s12887-019-1808-9	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.1186/s12887-019-1808-9	en
dc.identifier.eissn	1471-2431
dc.identifier.endpage	10	en
dc.identifier.issued	1	en
dc.identifier.journaltitle	BMC Pediatrics	en
dc.identifier.startpage	1	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10468/9360
dc.identifier.volume	19	en
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.publisher	BioMed Central	en
dc.rights	©The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	en
dc.subject	Fever	en
dc.subject	Knowledge	en
dc.subject	Parent	en
dc.subject	Randomised controlled trial	en
dc.subject	Information leaflet	en
dc.title	Randomised controlled trial of an intervention to improve parental knowledge and management practices of fever	en
dc.type	Article (peer-reviewed)	en