Nursing care of the child with febrile seizure - help needed

[Amandine]

Hi everybody,

As part of my pediatric assignement I have to write something about febrile seizures. the case I am given is the one of a 5 year-old child who is admitted to the hospital because of febrile seizure. This is the first time he is affected. I am asked to plan Education (guidelines/instructions for the home) for the parents and how am I going to implement education.

So far I am planning on divising my answer into several parts being:

- what is a febrile seizure? (definition, signs and symptoms, what happens when convulsing, etc)

- What can parents do

- How to reassure the parents

- How am I going to implement education

Pretty dull I know but these are the parts the teacher told us to write about.

Now what would you put in your education plan? how would you implement it? I was thinking of doing some kind of guideline form for parents to give as a handout for the implementation, what do you reckon?

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

hi, amandine! haven't heard from you in awhile!

your written education plan that you would turn in to your instructor is generally presented as an outline or a list of what you are going to do. it sounds like you basically have that already. rather than reassuring the parents, wouldn't you rather give them some information about why these seizures occur and what they need to do to prevent them from happening again? also, the way you are going to implement the education refers to the way you are going to teach this. so, you will want to list the ways you will teach, for example: discussion, demonstration, giving out written information or showing a video tape. you also want to make sure that you take some time at the end of your teaching to evaluate how well your "students" learned by asking a few simple questions to see if they can answer correctly. if you are going to hand out any written material you want to make sure you attach a copy of it to the report you turn in to your instructor along with any list of questions you intend to ask at the end of your teaching to evaluate the person's learning. in the case of febrile seizures, you may find that the parents need to be taught something as simple as how to take and monitor the child's temperature, so that will become part of your teaching plan as well as what they can do to bring a childs fever down and at what temperature do they need to seek professional medical attention.

check out some of these links. some of them were developed as information for parents. you may get some ideas on things to include in your teaching project.

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/febrile_seizures/febrile_seizures.htm - febrile seizure information page from the national institute of neurological disorders and stroke

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/febrile_seizures/detail_febrile_seizures.htm - febrile seizures fact sheet from the national institute of neurological disorders and stroke

http://www.drgreene.com/21_8.html - fast facts about febrile seizures

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000980.htm - medical encyclopedia information on febrile seizures - good information on what to do and treatment

http://www.healthatoz.com/healthatoz/atoz/dc/caz/neur/epil/epil_gen_ovw.jsp - at the left side of this page on seizures are directions on what you should do if someone is having a seizure (first aid for seizures). 911 is the united state nationwide telephone number to reach emergency services (police, fire, ambulance).

http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/learning-center/pted/docs/hc0306.pdf - this is a patient teaching pamplet on febrile seizures from vanderbilt medical center in the u.s.

http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic3009.htm - fever in the toddler

http://nips.med-web.com/handouts/individual%20pages/febrile%20seizures.htm - this is an information handout for parents at one pediatric doctor's office.

http://www.cpnonline.org/crs/crs/pa_convwfev_hhg.htm - another information handout for parents about febrile seizures