which thermometer do you prefer to use?

Hi! Im a mother of one, and every home for me, should have a thermometer because this could really help a lot in detecting whether one family member has a fever especially its young members. As what they said, fever is not a disease but a symptom of another disease so its really important to get the correct temperature of one person who has fever or suspected to have it. I have a mercurial thermometer at home, and i find it so effective and accurate in reading one's temperature. I also have a digital thermometer, its much easier and convenient to use plus it didn't have mercury content that we all know is very bad and unsafe to us humans and to our environment as well. The only problem i encounter with it was it really did not give accurate readings of fever sometimes. Maybe because of its battery's condition or what. I use both when reading temperature but i take so much care in handling the mercurial type because i know that its harmful when broken, touched, inhaled or thrown anywhere. Good night!

I think the traditional mercury thermometer is much more better in accuracy than the digital ones. It is quite correct that the patient is prone to the health hazards caused by mercury, but I should mention about a more dangerous aspect of using mercury thermometer which is environmental pollution. This may occur if the mercury thermometer is broken into pieces and the released mercury is not preserved properly.

Choice of thermometer would depend on the area of care you were providing..using a mercury one might not be advisable when doing your TPR readings on a patient who had epilepsy,or an acute mental condition..as long as the reading had been taken with a calibrated instrument,it should be fine.

I am a mother and a nurse. And yes, thermometers are really needed at home. Since my little daughter is sickly, she has 3 thermometers in her medicine tray at home. 2 mercury thermometers and 1 digital thermometer. I use the mercury thermometer often because of its accuracy. Eventhough, it takes it a long time to read the result(for 5 minutes and more) and even if it is breakable... I just watch it carefully that it will not fall and break. The digital thermometer usually have instructions on their boxes during purchase... Some instructions say that you should add +1 to the result and others say add +5 to the result depending on the brand of the digital thermometer. It is fast to read and you can just leave it behind while you are working to finish another task. It will just beep if it is done reading. You wont forget to take it from the patient's armpit not like on mercurial thermometers. =p And some lazy nurses use their hands to check on their patient's body temp? ahhaa Hw cool is that? Whick I have hands like that! So it has it's pros and cons. It depends on the person what he/she will use.

I prefer the digital thermometer. What you've said was very right, but of course when digital is not around we should know how to use those conventional one aside from thermometer.

in my case we use the digital but have these problems because mercury is highly dangerous and could damage our skin, according to recent reports of the health organization

When I was younger my mother used to use the basic mercury under the tongue thermometer. I don't really know what my doctors office used, but now the one I'm at used digital. Most places use digital ones. Now it's just where it reads from. I've had the under the arm ones which can also go anal, the ear ones and now I just got a temple one which is what my doctor office uses. For me, since I do have kids, it makes it easier if the reading can be fast since they fidget around so much. From all the doctors I've talked to they say digital is just as good as any other. It's possible the one at the doctors office is more accurate since it's probably more expensive though. But I think the safety of the patient is the main priority.

I perfectly understand your sentiments as a nurse myself.., I've experienced the same with the accuracy of using the mercury thermometers and the digital one.., I believed the digital thermometer reads the temperature lower than the actual.., Sometimes.., I even double check it with the mercury thermometer and compare especially if the chief complaints of the patient is febrile episodes with seizure precautions..it's good to be safe..=)we're dealing with lives...