A senior nursing student is doing her community clinical rotation. When visiting a young family to whom she has been assigned, the mother of a 3-year-old child states that her daughter does not feel well

Question

The nursing student feels her skin, which is warm. She asks the mother if she has taken her temperature to which the mother replies, "Yes, I used the same thermometer that was my great-grandmother's; it has been used by my family for years. Her oral temperature was 102.3° F." The most important action for the nursing student to perform is to do which of the following? a. Teach that temporal artery thermometers are more accurate than others.
b. Tell the mother that hospitals still use mercury thermometers.
c. Ask to see the thermometer.
d. Recommend a chemical thermometer for greater accuracy.

Answer 1

C
Inspect the thermometer to make sure that it is mercury. The mercury-in-glass thermometers are obsolete in the health care setting because of the environmental hazards of mercury. However, some patients still use mercury-in-glass thermometers at home. If you find a mercury-in-glass thermometer in the home, teach the patient about safer temperature devices and encourage him or her to take the thermometer to a neighborhood hazardous disposal location. There is a growing bed of research supporting the discontinuation of temporal artery thermometers in the clinical setting because of reported inaccurate readings. Chemical thermometers are useful for screening temperatures, especially in infants and young children. You need to confirm readings with electronic thermometers when treatment decisions need to be made.