Introduction:

Fever continues to impel parents/caregivers into disproportionate demand for differentiated health care, resulting in an ineffective quality of care. This search seems to be associated with anxieties and fears that parents/caregivers manifest regarding how they deal with the fever that suddenly arises in their children or children in their care.

Objectives:

Identify as attitudes of parents / caregivers towards a child with fever in the context of emergency; and identify the sources of information that influence them.

Methods:

A quantitative, transversal and descriptive-relational study was conducted, in a non-probabilistic convenience sample. A self-administered questionnaire was applied to 144 parents/caregivers who used the Pediatric Emergency Department of a hospital in the north of the country, with children with signs of fever.

Results:

The average age of parents/caregivers is 32.6 years (( 5.68 years), being mostly women (mothers, grandmothers and nannies). More than half of the participants live in rural areas, 45.5% have higher education and 57.9% of women and 47.9% of men have a technical profession.

Parents/caregivers who sought health professionals as a source of information revealed a more appropriate attitude towards children with fever (p = 0.035). It was found that 25% resorted to the health line, 18.1% to the pediatrician, 16.0% to their physician doctor, only 6.3% to the nurse and 4.9% to the pediatric nurse.

Conclusion:

It is imperative to give parents/caregivers skills that help them manage the effects of fever more carefully and effectively, in order to adopt a more appropriate attitude to this sign.

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