Childhood Fever: parental beliefs and management.

Childhood fever is often seen in family-practice. Clinical experience has shown the authors that parental anxiety often initiates early, aggressive treatment of fever with antipyretics. The authors studied parents' beliefs and practices relating to fever control in their children, and who or what their information sources were. The findings indicate that parents are commonly misinformed about the nature of childhood fever and its management, and that physicians need to learn more about conveying information on fever to patients.