Aims and objectives: To investigate the attitudes of nurses caring for hospitalised adult patients towards fever and antipyresis and to identify the predictors of these attitudes.
Background: Fever is a host defence mechanism, whose harmful effects are limited to specific patients. Findings about antipyretic treatment have further challenged the need for routine or aggressive fever suppression. Unfortunately, nurses continue to be fever phobic, while their attitudes towards fever and antipyresis considerably affect antipyretic practice.
Design: Prospective, cross-sectional, multicentre survey.
Methods: A convenience sample of registered and assistant nurses employed in surgical/medical wards and intensive care units of nine Greek hospitals was enrolled. The developed questionnaire included 10 multiple-choice, knowledge-evaluating items about fever and antipyresis, 10 Likert-type attitude-evaluating items towards fever and 10 towards antipyresis. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to identify the predictors of attitudes towards fever and antipyresis.
Results: The attitudes of the 458 participants were found to be relatively positive towards both fever and antipyresis. Lower fever/antipyresis knowledge score predicted both negative attitude towards fever (p = 0·001) and positive attitude towards antipyresis (p < 0·001), while longer professional experience predicted positive attitude towards antipyresis (p = 0·002).
Conclusions: Advancing nurses' evidence-based knowledge about fever and antipyresis is expected to limit their tendency to overtreat fever and favour fever care based on the assessment of actual patient demands.
Relevance to clinical practice: These findings highlight the need for continuing education programmes to eliminate fever phobia and improve nurses' competency for individualised fever care.
Keywords: adult patients; antipyresis; attitude; fever; knowledge; temperature.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.