(1094) Evaluation of Educational Needs Among Critical Care Providers

Introduction: Critical care is a rapidly evolving and increasingly sub-specialized area of medicine. The Advocate Health Enterprise Critical Care Integration Education sub-council was created to facilitate knowledge sharing across the southeast region of our enterprise and to help provide high quality patient centered care across a broad geographic area. Faculty Physicians, Advanced Practice Providers and Program directors from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Atrium Health Medical Center and Atrium Health Navicent participated on a voluntary basis.

Methods: A 25-question anonymous REDCap survey was sent to a multi-disciplinary critical care cohort across the enterprise. All critical care physicians, APP’s, and physician and APP trainees were included in the distribution list.

Results: There were 106 unique respondents from the three healthcare systems consisting of Attending Physicians (60.4%, 64), Advanced Practice Providers (32.1% 34) and Critical Care Physician Trainees (7.5%, 8). The largest proportion of respondents (40.6%) were categorically mid-career with 5-15 years of experience in critical care medicine and spent >75% of their time working clinically (74.5%). While most respondents endorsed belonging to professional organizations (SCCM, CHEST, ATS), the majority (73.6%) relied on these professional societies to meet their educational needs < 50% of the time. 52.8% of survey respondents reported spending an average of 1-3 hours/week on professional education and 75.5% felt that they had ample educational opportunities despite half saying they did not have enough time to attend them.

Conclusions: The results of this system wide survey support the notion that critical care practitioners desired ongoing continued medical education outside of that provided by major professional groups and organizations. While there was robust engagement in professional societies, respondents indicated that they relied on these organizations for their educational needs < 50% of the time. Respondents indicated preference for in-person protected time for education during working hours in a short, digestible format at a regular cadence. This feedback was used to develop an enterprise-wide critical care grand round format with content experts discussing emerging critical care concepts in a panel format quarterly.