(1119) Pilot of Virtual Core Curriculum for Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Advanced Practice Providers

Introduction: Maintaining competency in a wide breadth of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine disease states, treatments and pathophysiology is essential for advanced practice providers (APP) to provide care for pediatric intensive care (PICU) patients that is efficacious. Pediatric patients experience fewer emergencies than adults, leading to less experiential learning. The PCCM APP role is highly specialized with a paucity of providers trained in the field. It is difficult for single institutions to provide all the education these APPs require. With the use of online platforms rapidly growing, virtual lecture series now allow for providers to learn remotely. The objective of this project was to determine the feasibility of instituting a multi-institution core curriculum for PICU APPs that is delivered virtually on a weekly basis.

Methods: This conference series took place weekly from August 2022- August 2023, synchronously via Zoom and recorded and stored for asynchronous learning. The intended audience was primarily APPs as well as other parts of the PICU multidisciplinary team. The curriculum was developed at MSKCC and the majority of the lecturers were from MSKCC. The topics were adjusted year to year based on feedback. Demographic data was collected as part of a quality improvement initiative.

Results: For the academic year 2022-23, 68 sessions were held. The total number of participants that attended lectures was 871, with an average of 14.2 learners per session. Learners included nurse practitioners, physician assistants, registered nurses, registered dietians (RD) and physicians from 6 different institutions. Lectures were provided by attending physicians, fellows and residents, APPs, PhDs, Pharm Ds, and RDs from 19 different specialties and 7 different institutions.

Conclusions: Leveraging virtual platforms to provide specialized educational topics to APPs is not only feasible, but also allows for greater dissemination of the education beyond a single institution. We hope to further collect data to determine the utility of these sessions via self-reported satisfaction as well as via post-tests. Further additions to the curriculum based off feedback will include case management discussions and procedural lectures. We hope to track the use of the asynchronous portal going forward as well.