Implementation of an Innovative Pediatric Hospital Medicine Education Series

Limitations on resident duty hours require formal education programs to be high-yield and impactful. Hospital medicine (HM) topics provide the foundation for inpatient pediatric knowledge pertinent to pediatric residents and medical students. Our primary objective was to describe the creation of an innovative pediatric HM curriculum designed to increase learners’ medical knowledge and their confidence in communicating with patients and families about these topics; our secondary objective was to evaluate the level of innovation of the conference sessions perceived by the learners.

A systematic approach was used to develop a curriculum framework incorporating a variety of interactive and engaging educational strategies. Six sessions were studied over the 2012–2013 academic year. The bimonthly sessions were presented during the resident daily conference schedule as a recurring pediatric HM series. Change in learners’ medical knowledge and confidence in communicating with families were analyzed presession to postsession by using McNemar’s test and the Wilcoxon signed rank test, respectively. Learners rated the level of innovation for each session on a 5-point Likert scale.

Content covered during the 6 sessions included bronchiolitis, child abuse, health care systems, meningitis/fever, urinary tract infection, and wheezing. Medical knowledge increased presession to postsession (P < .001), as did confidence in communicating about each topic with families (P < .01). The average rating score for all sessions was highly innovative.

A systematic approach is useful for developing new curricula for pediatric learners. Focusing on high-yield topics and established competencies allows impactful education sessions within the confines of pediatric learners’ schedule constraints.