The purpose of the thesis was to improve the guidance for the parents of infants and toddlers that have fallen ill with infectious diseases in the municipality group of Riihimäki. The goal was to gather treatment instructions corresponding to the current recommendations for treatment and compile them into a guidebook in plain language, which will be distributed to parents. The child welfare clinic in the municipality group of Riihimäki was using a ”treating an ill child” guidebook that was not up-todate anymore. The goal was to update the existing guidebook, so that the employees of the clinic could hand out guidebooks to people visiting the clinic.

For the theoretical background of the thesis the most common infectious diseases of children were studied. In order to delimit the subject, the nurses at the child welfare clinic of the municipality group of Riihimäki were asked for the names of the diseases they would like to be discussed in the guidebook. The goal of the theoretical part was to give background information on infectious diseases and treatment instructions that correspond to the recommendations for treatment. In addition to infectious diseases, the theoretical part included the development of a child as well as clinic operation.

For the functional part a guidebook was created based on the suggestions from the municipality group of Riihimäki, the authors’ own ideas and a vast source material . The guidebook deals with the infectious diseases of infants. The characteristics of a good patient guide are taken into account in the guide book. The goals included making the guidebook easy to read as well as taking the target demographic into account when designing the appearance of the guidebook. As the work progressed, the material for the guidebook was divided into two leaflets.