Date of this Version

2025

Document Type

DNP Project

Abstract

Fever is a leading cause of urgent care visits for children. These visits are often due to parental anxiety and a lack of understanding regarding appropriate fever management. Pediatric nurses are important educators for families during these visits, yet they usually face challenges such as time constraints, a lack of standardized materials, and varying confidence levels. A visually engaging tool may support nurses in providing more efficient and confident fever education.

The purpose of this quality improvement project was to evaluate whether implementing a color-coded fever education brochure, compared to standard discharge instructions, improved pediatric nurses’ confidence and reduced perceived barriers in delivering fever education at the urgent care center.

This project utilized a pre- and post-survey design to assess changes in pediatric nurses’ self-reported confidence and perceived barriers to fever education delivery. A sample of 15 nurses at Nicklaus Children’s West Kendall Urgent Care Center participated in the project. First, a pre-intervention survey was administered to gather baseline data on nurses’ confidence and the challenges they face when educating parents about fever.

Following this, nurses were introduced to a newly developed color-coded fever education brochure designed to support quick and effective parent education. The brochure featured green, yellow, and red sections, representing different fever severity levels and corresponding recommended actions. This visual structure aimed to simplify fever management information for both nurses and parents. Nurses were given time to review the brochure, but it was not implemented in clinical care during the project.

After reviewing the brochure, a post-intervention survey was administered to evaluate perceived usefulness, anticipated impact, and changes in nurses’ confidence and perceived barriers. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and a review of open-ended responses.

Nurses reported an increase in confidence after the intervention and review of the brochure, particularly they found that it would be useful to explain fever management clearly to parents. The brochure was rated as highly useful for its visual design, color-coded structure, and simplicity. Furthermore, nurses believed the brochure could help reduce time spent on education and improve parent understanding.

Although the brochure was not implemented in practice, pediatric nurses at the West Kendall Urgent Care Center perceived it as a valuable tool. The evaluation suggests that a color-coded fever brochure has the potential to improve nurses’ confidence and reduce common barriers to fever education. These findings support future clinical implementation of the brochure when discharging patients.

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