Managing febrile infants: impact of literature recommendations published during a physician’s residency

In this study, HIP Investigators Dr. Elizabeth Cox and Dr. Maureen Smith hypothesized that sepsis workup recommendations are associated with practice recommendations published during the physician’s residency. Using data from the community tracking study, the found that pediatricians recommended sepsis workups 81.6% of the time and family physicians 67.7%. Increased recommendations occurred among pediatricians who completed residency from 1975-1980 (p < .05) and among family physicians who completed residency from 1981-1987 (p < .005), when specialty-specific journals published recommendations for sepsis workups for febrile infants, suggesting an unrecognized and enduring impact of such publications.