Appropriate Body Temperature Measurement Method for Parents of Infants

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to find a method for parents to easily and accurately measure their infant's body temperature following instructions and to recommend such method as the standard for parents at home. METHODS: Parents of 120 pediatric patients who were brought to the emergency room or well-baby clinic of a general hospital in Seoul were informed of correct ways to measure children's body temperature using digital and infrared thermometers. They were then asked to measure their children's body temperature. We observed and assessed the accuracy of the technique for each measuring method. Difficulty of each method was evaluated by the feedback from parents after the measurement. The correlation was analyzed between axillary, tympanic, or forehead temperature and rectal temperature, and the differences of accuracy and difficulty were compared between the measurement methods. RESULTS: Better accuracy was observed when parents measured the tympanic (87.5%) or axillary temperature (83.3%), rather than the forehead (76.7%) or rectal temperature (47.5%) (p<0.05). More parents indicated ease of use when they measured the forehead (89.2%) or tympanic (80.0%) temperature, rather than the axillary (60.0%) or rectal temperature (5.8%) (p<0.05). The axillary, tympanic, and forehead temperatures correlated well with the rectal temperature when measured accurately by parents (r=0.974, 0.976, 0.942, respectively). CONCLUSION: As parents measured the tympanic temperature using an infrared thermometer with the most accuracy and ease, using this method is recommended as the standard method to measure infant's body temperature at home.