Table 2.

Exemplary quotes from participants’ interviews

Theme	Quote	#
The emotional component of fever phobia	I have to say that up to 39 I don’t get worried. The paediatrician has always told me that 38° is not fever when it comes to young children, so I don't panic. On the other hand, my husband has a hard time dealing with the hot condition of fever. […] When my older daughter has fever, she can't sleep, so I keep reassuring her, and when she falls asleep once the medicine kicks in, I feel calmer. Her dad, on the other hand, has a big crisis every time the girls are sick, and then I have to reassure him too (Mother, 39 years old, two children)	1
	I think it is very difficult for someone to help parents to be truly informed. We can inform, but what I see in daily practice is that I repeat exactly the same things over the years, for the same people. So it is very difficult to remove that fatalism, those fears that parents may have with respect to that number written on the thermometer. It’s hard to help them to develop a certain capacity to reason about what the child is like. Parents lost sight of their children’s real status. Close your eyes: what do you feel? Do that, rather than looking at the thermometer and thinking it’s bad because the temperature is high! (Male paediatrician, 64 years old, 30 years of experience)	2
	It is very different when you are in the medical practice. You experience emotions but you are more cold-blooded than with your son, because other emotions emerge… When I feel less rational I tell myself “Stop it, don't panic with your daughter”! Or I try to remind myself that I know these things (Female medical assistant, 46 years old, 21 years of experience)	3
	Experience teaches you. When you experience the first fevers of your children, you immediately call the paediatrician and ask what to do. You ask him/her if you have to bring them for a visit. Now I tend to observe how things go. I call the paediatrician and I evaluate the situation only after two days of fever (Mother, 39 years old, three children)	4
	Answers are not always the same. Recently, I met a mother of several children who had her 10-day-old baby with fever, and said “I'll wait for the next day”. But with a baby of ten days it’s unthinkable to wait for the next day. So, those automatisms that she used for the older ones did not work with this one (Female paediatrician, 47 years old, 15 years of experience)	5
The child’s unspoken right to be sick is at risk	The child’s feverish state must be treated with respect for the child. Saying that fever starts at 38° automatically allows the adult to dispose of the child as he or she wishes. Sometimes parents react to fever by giving the child something, so that at least she does not feel sick. No, you can’t do it for your convenience. Parents need to be educated to manage this situation in a clever, not an opportunistic way (Mother, 37 years old, five children)	6
	[Parents] want to lower the child’s fever at all costs. There is a discrepancy between private practices and the hospital. In the hospital, I always have the impression that drugs are given at maximum dosages because the child is very sick. But the message that is passed on to the mothers is that they should go on giving these drugs to their child for several days, even when the child feels better (Female paediatrician, 47 years old, 15 years of experience)	7
	We have very little patience today: if a child coughs, we want to give her a medicine straight away to stop the cough. A child no longer has the right to be sick and has to always be healthy (Female medical assistant, 51 years old, 20 years of experience)	8
	You know, nobody talks about the sick child and there are so many obscure points regarding being a parent. Nobody talks to you about the difficulties that can exist with breastfeeding, for example, which I experienced only after having five children. If you don't have the right people by your side, you can have so many negative experiences (Mother, 39 years old, five children)	9
	Every now and then the management would call you and ask you “why did you talk about these things”? Cause maybe a dad had complained because his wife was frightened by this topic… Every mom and every dad gets it in a way different. Okay, the topic of fever [seems straightforward]. But you have to be careful because if the child has meningitis, he may only have 38.5° of fever, but the general condition may not be that good. You then inform the parent, and there are those who take it as good information, and those who take it in another way, like “this guy is crazy”. Here, in my opinion, here is where we must be careful (Male paediatrician, 58 years old, 23 years of experience)	10
The relational component of fever phobia	You basically call him [the paediatrician] to hear a friendly voice, to hear that everything is fine, even if deep down you know it is not that serious (Mother, 35 years old, two children)	11
	My role is precisely that of trying to calm the mother about the benignity of the symptoms and that the smaller the child, the more I have to be careful because the child's cooperation is a little less good. So the first thing is to reassure the mother on the benignity of the fever, because sometimes mothers are alarmed. So this is my first role, a sort of a firefighter (Male paediatrician, 65 years old, 33 years of experience)	12
	It is so important to have someone like me or my colleague, someone who they trust more, a closer relationship, someone who they feel more comfortable with. It’s always the same, it’s hard to explain. It comes natural to me because parents feel reassured (Female medical assistant, 51 years old, 20 years of experience)	13