How long after physical cooling should I measure body temperature

Many people think of physical cooling when they have a fever. Indeed, physical cooling is a relatively fast cooling method, and the clinical definition of physical cooling is relatively broad, and many methods belong to the category of physical cooling. In addition to paying attention to physical cooling methods, you should also pay attention to rechecking the temperature. There is a time limit for rechecking the temperature. How long should you wait before measuring your temperature again after physical cooling?

1. Half an hour

In clinical practice, when encountering a patient with fever, the nurse will treat the patient according to the doctor's instructions and generally remeasure the temperature and record it half an hour later. However, in reality, half an hour is not the best time to remeasure your temperature in some cases.

2. Cooling principle

Although there are differences in time, the cooling principles are the same. It may be that warm water or alcohol bath cooling contacts a large area of ​​the patient's body surface and reduces the temperature by heat dissipation, but it cannot provide sustained cooling; ice bag cold compress method has a slow cooling rate due to the small local contact area, and the skin sensory function of elderly patients with fever is low, so special attention should be paid to observing the skin of the cold compress area to prevent frostbite; ice blanket cooling solves the problem that the above cooling methods are difficult to maintain, ensures the patient's continuous and stable cooling, reduces the workload of nurses, and overcomes the shortcomings of traditional cooling that requires long nursing time and unstable cooling effect, and is worthy of clinical use.

3. Note

Being able to obtain an accurate temperature is critical in evaluating, diagnosing, and treating patients. If the measurement time is earlier than the optimal time point for re-measuring body temperature, it cannot reflect the cooling effect and needs to be measured again or even repeatedly. This not only causes a waste of nursing human resources, but may even cause tension among patients and their families and affect the doctor-patient relationship. If the temperature is re-measured later than the optimal time point, it will be difficult to observe changes in the patient's condition and delay diagnosis and treatment. Re-measuring the temperature within 30 minutes lacks accuracy and consistency and may even result in repeated medication.