When you were a child did the nurse or Doctor take your temperature mostly Orally or Rectally?

Usually orally or in the ear for me here in the UK. I’m in my 20s, RT is something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced apart from maybe when I was a baby at home.

The nurses always took my temperature orally. Even when I saw different doctors, the nurses had the same approach to using thermometers.

Another thing. Not going to the doctor's, but when I was in hospital, the nurses would pass me the thermometer and I needed to insert it rectally. The nurses expected I knew how to do it. I don't know what would have happened if I had seemed not to know.

Come to think of it, my wife too was sent to hospital for appendectomy in childhood. And when I inquired how her temperature was taken there, as I knew that at home in her family they did it in the armpit, she changed topics. So she may have had something like @Nurse_Phillips, or at least something embarrassing like having it taken by the nurse the first time, or having to insert the thermometer in front of the nurse the first time. No, I won't ask her for additional facts. 😉

I don’t recall my doctor ever taking my temperature. His nurse would take it orally. When I was in the hospital, the nurses always took it rectally until I was 12. I would say 90% of the instances before age 10 in my life were rectal.

Until 8 or 9 years old 100% of the time my temperature was taken by my mom or a nurse rectal. After that until probably 10 or 11 years old it was probably 50/50 between orally and rectal at the doctor's office. This was in the 60's.

I don’t recall a clinical setting where I actually had a rectal temperature taken though I am certain it happened in infancy. It was either orally or under the arm until electronic devices became mainstream. Then it was in the ear and ultimately evolved a quick forehead scan.

Growing up I spent a considerable portion of my time with a hired Nanny - who was also a part-time nurse. Needless to say she was a stout advocate for the traditional methods. My temperature was routinely taken rectally. This occurred right up to the age of 14/15. When I would attend the doctor's office it was sometimes taken this way. If my nanny brought me then it was always rectal, she had a working relationship with the folks at the surgery from years past. When my parents took me, it was always oral.