Fever: Enemy or Friend?

Abstract

Fever phobia, that is the misconceptions that parents have about childhood fever, is commonplace in many parts of the world and has a high psychological, financial and medical cost. This dissertation reports of a health centre based survey which allowed to analyse and compare parental beliefs about childhood fever and its management in three geographically close but culturally different countries in Europe: Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Of all the parents interviewed, the Luxembourgish parents had the most misconceptions about fever, and treated fever more aggressively and at lower temperatures. Dutch parents were the least fever phobic and least interventionist, also in comparison to the international literature. The German parents took an in-between stance. <br /> Several hypotheses are put forward to account for the significant differences in attitude towards childhood fever between the parents from the three countries. These include both structural factors, e.g. differences in health care system and accessibility, as well as cultural factors, e.g. how medicaments are viewed by patients.