MINOR HEALTH ISSUES FOR MINOR PATIENTS
As healthcare professionals – and the population in general – gears up for a ‘winter of discontent’, what with COVID-19, the flu and all of the other seasonal illnesses, children’s health issues remain a constant in many families across the country.
A
s a pharmacist, you’ll fully understand that your advice and support is often sought out by frantic parents – first-time
parents in particular – as they struggle to cope with what are essentially minor ailments in their babies and young children.
Unfortunately, while these ailments are primarily minor in nature, they often lead to discomfort and irritability in the child, and anxiety and upset in the parent.
Fortunately, however, there are a range of products on the market for practically every minor ailment that affects children.
Here are some of the most common……
Raised temperature A raised temperature in a child is caused by the resetting of the body's own natural thermostat to a higher level in order to make the body hotter, the blood vessels on the surface of the skin become much smaller to minimise the loss of heat. As a result, once this new, higher setting of the body’s own thermostat is reached, the temperature will be higher than normal.
The reason why many parents panic about a high temperature is that they fear it will lead to febrile convulsions, but a raised temperature may actually reinforce the body’s own immune system, which is fighting the problem
To reduce a child’s temperature, parents should be advised to strip the child down and sponge them with a cool cloth. In terms of medication, paracetamol will not only help to reduce the temperature, but will also help to kill any pain that the child may be experiencing.
Common colds Despite vast medical progress, there’s still no ‘cure’ for the common cold and so treatment of the symptoms is really all that can be done. This year, as a result of COVID-19, there is bound to be more panic in parents when their children display common cold symptoms, such as a sore throat, runny nose or high temperature.
Try and reassure them as much as possible that these symptoms are more than likely to be simple cold symptoms and not those of anything more sinister. Sore throats and a temperature
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