Reducing medical error through systems improvement: the management of febrile infants.

Worry about avoiding the disaster of overwhelming bacterial sepsis in a young febrile infant has cost many a pediatrician sleepless nights. Which infant is destined to become critically ill and which will recover in a few days from a trivial viral infection without treatment? Unable to predict reliably the course of febrile illnesses, pediatricians often select the option of treating many infants to benefit a few. (June 2000)