Non-invasive No-Touch Temporal Thermometers?

1 I used these at my last LTC facility and found them to be very accurate. Actually, I never knew about them UNTIL working for that LTC facility! Very easy to use and quick.

Of course, if I got a reading that was questionable, I would then recheck using a different method.

How do you feel about these? Any concerns?
Notoriously unreliable, along with tympanic thermometers. Just used one that a parent brought in this weekend - read 94.4. Rectal temp was 97.9. Quite a bit of difference.

Quote from ~PedsRN~Notoriously unreliable, along with tympanic thermometers. Just used one that a parent brought in this weekend - read 94.4. Rectal temp was 97.9. Quite a bit of difference.

You mean random number generators....yeah not accurate at all.

I keep reading all these articles about how accurate they are in journals. The ONS just published one in the journal I got yesterday. But in reality they're awful. I'm get numbers ranging across a 3 degree centigrade range. I think the company that makes them has deep pockets. I know they're very expensive.

I bought one for my school nurse office and I have noticed a significant difference, 2-3 degrees F sometimes, difference between my oral and scanning thermometer. Right out of the box, the scanning thermometer read me as having a fever of 101.6 F. I thought "Sweet!! I can go home!!" I most definitely was not sick that day, either.

Quote from ~PedsRN~Notoriously unreliable, along with tympanic thermometers. Just used one that a parent brought in this weekend - read 94.4. Rectal temp was 97.9. Quite a bit of difference.

Thank you for your replies!

The ONLY time I've ever seen these was when I was "screened" for Ebola crossing the border between Kenya and Uganda last October. Every single person that went through had a temp of between 36.1-36.4 C. I prefer good old oral or axillary any day. I hate tympanic or temporal in children.

Don't personally have much experience with temporal thermometers, but CNAs getting notoriously unreliable temperatures with tympanic ones is part of the reason I get my own vitals. That and the disheartening number of times I've seen residents with respiratory rates of 10 or 40 that were all charted as the Magic 18.In defense of tympanic thermometers though, they do​ work provided one gets it in far enough and actually points it toward the tympanic membrane. It's just so many of my aides seem to think getting a kinda-sorta temp of the external ear is good enough.