Towards evidence-based medicine for paediatricians

How often can you cry ‘Wolf!’?

The fable of the bored shepherd boy, alone on a hillside (except for the sheep—sheep don’t count as company—even in Yorkshire) waiting for something to happen, is one that I hope most of us know and can recount if needed at any dinner table.

In my folk recollections of the tale, it’s three times that the lad calls ‘Wolf!’. Twice he gets the thrill of a village-load of yokels pounding out to his hillside vantage point, and it’s the third—truthful—one that everyone ignores and the sheep get gobbled up.

How many times can we call ‘Wolf!’ on a ward and get away with it? Or how good does a Padiatric Early Warning Score need to be before we’ll think it’s useful?

The shepherd boy’s actually pretty damned good. A 33% hit rate would be considered remarkable by most folk wanting an alert about a life-threatening condition....

from Archives of Disease in Childhood current issue http://bit.ly/2Ngf6iY