Use of the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia's Pedi Crisis 2.0 Mobile Application as an Educational Assessment Tool...

Anesthesiologists manage life-threatening, critical events in a fast-paced, high-distraction atmosphere, with little time to deliberate about treatment options. The Society for Pediatric Anesthesia developed the Pedi Crisis 2.0 mobile application to assist in managing critical pediatric perioperative events. It was hypothesized that the application could be used as a formal educational assessment tool in pediatric anesthesiology fellowship training, and a 1-h classroom examination was designed to assess the impact of the application on fellows' knowledge of the management of pediatric critical events. This study sought to evaluate whether the just-in-time knowledge provided by the application leads to improved testing outcomes compared with baseline knowledge alone.

Pediatric anesthesia fellows participated in a 1-h session with 10 pediatric critical event scenarios (stems). Each scenario presented a case with open-ended questions on standard management. Participants were randomized to answer half of the stems using the application and half of the stems not using the application. Instead, they utilized knowledge from routine practice, memory recall, and alternative electronic resources. Two blinded reviewers graded answers, and the average percentage of correct answers was calculated.

Fifty-one pediatric anesthesiology fellows from four institutions enrolled in the study. Six fellows were improperly randomized and excluded. The total percentage of correct scores for stems 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 and stems 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 were significantly higher for the application condition (78.7% vs. 45.4% and 59% vs. 40%. P < 0.0001). The percentage of correct answers for individual stems varied; the application condition scores were always statistically higher than the without-application condition ( P < 0.05).

Pediatric anesthesiology fellows were significantly more successful at describing the management of pediatric critical events when using the Pedi Crisis 2.0 application compared to not using the application. Thus, the results indicate that cognitive aids, such as Pedi Crisis 2.0, should be an integral component of pediatric anesthesia fellowship training curricula.