Yes, yes, and yes.

A new study from the British Medical Journal found that doctors who trust their gut feelings when evaluating a sick child significantly helped the child. This is important because many children with serious infections have few clinical findings on examination. For instance, they don’t have a rash, an ear infection, obvious diarrhea, or abnormal lung findings. And because very young children often have few clinical findings, pediatricians always need to examine babies two months old and younger whenever they have a fever. The source of the fever can be hard to find and in babies, infections can spread very rapidly.

The study reported, “The clinicians’ gut feeling that the child was seriously ill considerably increased the chance that a severe infection was present… and heeding the feeling might have prevented two cases from being overlooked,” according to MedPage Today, an online medical journal. In my experience as a pediatrician, I can’t tell you the number of times I have looked at children who have no “signs” of infection but did not let them leave without testing. The reason is that after 27 years, I have learned to trust my gut feelings.

A few months ago,…