Erasmus

Reflection: children

You meet a patient, a young child who has very high temperature. In addition, the child has convulsions, or is twitching. The child has difficulty breathing, his eyes are not focused and he is foaming at the mouth.

Such a situations should be treated as an emergency and a doctor should be called immediately to assess the child. The symptoms indicate that the child is having a febrile seizure.

To reduce the body temperature the nurse should undress the child and the child should be nursed in a cool room.
It is also important to for a doctor to establish the cause of the seizure and to rule out serious infections or epilepsy.

Some children may be more prone than others to febrile seizures. In such cases it is customary to give the child antipyretic agents until they are three years old, if they develop a fever over 38 ° C.