The mankind has three main enemies at any rate: Fever, Starvation and War. It is Fever that one dreads most among them.
Sir William Osler, 1896
Goal: to get a notion about the device of thermometers, the rules of their storage, disinfection and temperature taking, types of fever, ways of feverish patients' care; to master skills.
Knowledge objectives:
► to know the fever's definition, its stages; temperature taking rules; mistakes in temperature taking; classifications of fever.
Skills objectives:
► to develop practical skills in temperature taking and registration on a temperature chart; care of feverish patients in different stages of fever.
Subject-matter:
1) the device of thermometers;
2) the rules of thermometer storage and disinfection;
3) the rules of temperature taking;
4) the types of fever;
5) the ways of feverish patients' care.
Equipment required: the maximal medical thermometer, the marked glass (jar) for disinfection of thermometers with 2% and 0.5% chloramine solution, a temperature chart.
Fever is the rise of body temperature that appears as protective-adaptive reaction of the organism in response to pathogens, is a non-specific attribute of many diseases. Fevers are divided by a level of the temperature rising and by character of fluctuations of a body temperature. There are rules of temperature
taking which allow avoiding mistakes. The temperature must be registered on the temperature chart.
Signs of illness are specific and non-specific. The rise of body temperature higher than 37 °С is a non-specific sign of illness.
Fahrenheit in 1723 was the first who offered to take temperature by means of medical thermometer.
Disturbances of thermoregulation, connected with change of a metabolism (accumulation of so-called pyrogenic substances - products of disintegration of fibers etc.) are the main reasons of the temperature rising. The maintenance of higher than normal temperature could be considered as the reaction to various irritators, which leads to a thermoregulation reorganization. More often, fever arises in infectious diseases, but the temperature rising can be only of the neurotic origin.