Accuracy of parents in measuring body temperature with a tympanic thermometer

Robinson, Joan L; Jou, Hsing; Spady, Donald W

The current study showed that readings obtained by parents differ from those obtained by a nurse using the same instrument by a mean of 0.44°C, with 33% of the readings differing by a clinically significant amount (0.5°C or more). The absolute differences were similar for febrile and afebrile children. Using the reference standard of a tympanic temperature measured by a nurse with a model of thermometer commonly used in hospitals, the parents did not detect a fever in four of 13 cases (although in two of these cases, the reading by the parent was just 0.1 °C below our definition of fever). This suggests that the readings obtained by a parent with a tympanic thermometer are sometimes not reliable. In fact, previous studies showed that parents' subjective assessment of whether their child had a fever had a sensitivity of 81.8% [7] and 88.9% [8] , which is similar to the 76 % sensitivity in the current study when parents used a tympanic thermometer.