Fever Infants and Therapeutic Education in Emergency Department
Condition: Fever
MeSH terms: Emergencies; Fever
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      To evaluate the effect of a therapeutic education session on fever versus a control education
      session on household accidents on the behavior and knowledge of families concerning the
      management of infant fever between day 4 and day 7 after the intervention
    

Detailed description: 
      Increased attendance at pediatric emergencies is observed in many countries. Fever, a
      frequent reason for consultation in pediatric emergencies, contributes to this phenomenon and
      is known to cause panic reactions in parents that are not justified by the actual state of
      the child. The accurate identification of families' lack of knowledge of fever has allowed us
      to develop a therapeutic education session, after which families should be able to properly
      care for a febrile child without excessive use of emergency services.

      The hypothesis is that a therapeutic education session on fever in infancy, intended for
      parents, carried out in pediatric emergencies, after a consultation for febrile illness will
      allow:

        -  improve family behaviors and knowledge regarding fever in children.

        -  limit the number of new consultations to pediatric emergencies in the next 6 months.

      The project takes place in two successive phases.

        1. First phase, which is now completed, consisted of 4 stages:

           A. Semi-structured interviews conducted by an anthropologist with parents of children
           aged 3 months to 2 years who consulted pediatric emergencies for the reason "fever". The
           anthropologist questioned the families about their perceptions of the fever, the
           perceived origin, the fears associated with this symptom, the behavior adopted, the
           reasons for the consultation in these services:

           B. Development of a therapeutic education session for fever. This session was conceived
           from the data of the literature but also from the results of the semi-directive
           interviews, in particular to better correspond to the sociocultural characteristics of
           the families consulting in pediatric emergencies.

           C. Elaboration of a questionnaire to evaluate behaviors and knowledge, called "D-FI"
           questionnaire: the thematic cross-sectional analysis of the interviews led to the
           construction of a knowledge assessment questionnaire on the management of fever in
           infants by families. This questionnaire will assess the effectiveness of the therapeutic
           education intervention.

           D. Validation of the D-Fi questionnaire in a test population: the questionnaire was
           administered to "uneducated" parents in the management of fever and to health
           professionals. The results between these two groups were compared. Different aspects
           have been studied:

             -  Reliability of the questionnaire.

             -  Quality of each selected item

             -  Internal validity

             -  Calculation of a score to assess skills and knowledge on fever

        2. The study reported at Clinical trial corresponds to the second phase of this project.

      A randomized controlled trial will evaluate the impact of the therapeutic education session
      developed in Phase 1 on family behaviors and knowledge on fever compared to a control
      intervention. The intervention control will be a health education session on the prevention
      of domestic accidents. The D-Fi survey designed during the first phase will be used during
      this test. The recruitment of consulting patients in two different hospitals, namely the
      hospitals of Robert-Debré (Paris 19th) and Necker-Enfants Malades (Paris 15th), will widen
      the socio-cultural diversity of the population included in this project and improve the
      external validity of the study.
    

Intervention name(s): Therapeutic education on fever; Therapeutic education on household accidents
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Session for therapeutique education on fever; Session for therapeutic education on household accidents
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Double (Participant, Outcomes Assessor)
Primary purpose: Prevention