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A comparison of mercury and digital clinical thermometers
Author(s) -
Davies Sian Pugh,
BSC John Y. Kassab,
Thrush Abigail J.,
BA Peter H. S. Smith
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
journal of advanced nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.948
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1365-2648
pISSN - 0309-2402
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2648.1986.tb01285.x
Subject(s) - thermometer , mercury (programming language) , medicine , computer science , physics , programming language , quantum mechanics
A primarily clinical trial has been undertaken to investigate and compare the use of mercury and digital thermometers in a ward situation. Both laboratory and clinical studies show that there is no significant difference in the average accuracy of the two types of thermometers, however there is a greater fluctuation of readings of temperature when using electronic thermometers. In clinical studies between 9 and 23% of repeated measurements using an electronic thermometer differ by 0.5°C or more whilst the corresponding range for mercury thermometers is 0‐6%. It is also shown that when making clinical measurements with mercury thermometers there is no clinical advantage in using a measurement time longer than 3 minutes.