I’ve seen 97.6-99.6°F vs 97.0-99.0°F for oral temp and pulse listed as 60-100 vs 58-99 on different cheat sheets - plus fever at 100.4°F in some places but 100.0°F in others; what benchmarks do you actually use and what’s your source? It bugs me when a 0.2° or 2 bpm flips someone from “normal” to “notify,” so I’m hoping for a definitive set of numbers. Anyone else figure this out?
Go with facility policy and trend the patient: we use 97.6–99.6°F oral, pulse 60–100, and fever at 100.4°F (same as CDC), but baseline beats a single cutoff. If someone runs 96.8 every day, a jump to 99.0 means more than the sheet. Curious what your policy binder lists for fever.
Go by policy and CDC: 97.6–99.6°F oral, pulse 60–100, and fever at 100.4°F, but trend matters. If their baseline is 96.8, even 100.0 is a 3.2° jump and I notify. I check the last 24–72 hrs and document the pattern before escalating.
On my unit we lean on Loeb/McGeer-style criteria: fever is >100.0°F, two temps >99.0°F, or a jump 2°F or more over their usual, so tiny cutoffs don’t whiplash us. If it’s borderline I wait 15 minutes, make sure no hot/cold drinks and use the same site/device, then recheck and note their baseline — what setting are you in?
I anchor to site + baseline: after three stable checks I record their usuals and set notify for HR +20 from their norm or temp ‘≥2°F over baseline’ or 100.4°F — @mholland’s Loeb/McGeer note keeps tiny swings from whiplash. Also pick one device/site because temporal runs different from oral — thermometers are like bathroom scales; does your unit have a standard?
I treat your “0.2° or 2 bpm” as noise; standardize site/time. Do you log three morning baselines before setting alerts?
Same headache, so I stopped chasing absolutes and use facility policy plus NEWS2 — fever at 38.0°C and action by score/trend, not a “0.2° or 2 bpm” blip; National Early Warning Score (NEWS) 2 | RCP. One concrete fix: stick to one device/site per resident and do two readings 15 minutes apart before you notify, unless they look unwell — want me to share the EMR alert settings we use?
, this drives me nuts too. I pick one source for oral (I use 97.0–99.0°F) and normalize by site — axillary usually runs about 0.5–1.0°F lower and rectal about 0.5–1.0°F higher — then I keep ‘100.4°F/38°C’ as the absolute fever line while documenting each resident’s baseline and trend. Building on @mholland, setting the chart’s notify to a delta from their usual plus that absolute cut helps avoid flip‑flopping on tiny blips.