The effect of home visits to children aged 0-5 years admitted to the emergency service with the complaint of fever on growth and development and readmission to hospital

The aim of this research was to determine the effect of home visits to 0-5 year old children admitted to the emergency service with the symptom of fever on growth and development and readmission to the hospital. The sample of this non-randomized controlled research consisted of 62 3 year old children, 31 intervention and 31 control. A survey form, at home follow-up and care form for 3 year old children and Ankara developmental screening inventory were used to collect the data. Children in the intervention group were cared for and monitored with home visits once a month for 3 months. In the control group, 2 interviews were conducted in the hospital and at home. The data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, chi-square test and fisher's exact test in IBM SPSS Statistics v.22.0 package program. For all analyses, p values below 0.05 were considered significant. In the results of this study, while the mean score of AGTE general development was almost the same in the intervention group (122.42±4.5) and the control group (123.45±4.0) in the 1st month (p>0.05), the intervention group (131.74±4.1) showed a higher increase than the control group (124.19±3.8) in the 3rd month. (p<0.05). While the rate of children who were normal according to the AGTE T table was the same in the intervention and control groups in the 1st month (61.3%, p>0.05), it was found that these rates increased in the intervention group (96.8%) and decreased in the control group (41.9%) in the 3rd month (p˂0.05). In total, 30.6% of the children were found to be not normal according to the AGTE T table. The mean number of readmission to the hospital with chidren's fever symptom was 0.26±0.4 in the intervention group and 0.65±0.5 in the control group at 3 months (p˂0.05). In conclusion, this research has shown that home visits by nurses have both an effect on children's growth and development and reduce the number of readmissions to hospital with fever symptom.