Abstract
Increased temperature occurs at 29% of all patients in hospitals. There exist different views of how nursing care should be carried out with febrile patients. The aim of this empirical study was to describe a group of nurses' care for febrile adult patients and their knowledge about fever. Questionnaires were distributed to departments of internal medicine that had risk patients: persons suffering from heart-and lung diseases, impaired immune, neurological problems and persons over 65 years. The questionnaires were processed with statistical methods. Eighty-eight questionnaires were submitted and 61 were analyzed. The results showed that nurses had various opinions about when the patient had fever and how nursing care should be carried out. A majority of the nurses considered that there existed risk patients. The most common measure was to administer antipyretic medications. Differences in nurses' knowledge of fever were found, which may highlights how patients with fever should be care for and the need of specific guidelines in order to improve the quality of care for these patients.