(1118) No Scavenger Hunt Is Complete Without the “PICU Essentials”

Introduction: In the pediatric ICU, there are many resources available to learners; the amount of new information can be overwhelming and hard to navigate. At our institution, a helpful tool that has been available since 2017 is our “PICU Essentials” smart phone application. Containing a wealth of information for routine pediatric critical care as well as low volume/high risk situations, this app was initially well used. Over the past few years, it has seemed vastly underutilized, particularly by new trainees (pediatric and emergency medicine residents) at the beginning of their PICU rotations. Through a quality improvement effort, we aimed to improve trainee familiarity with the application and assess the ability to find information in that venue compared to conventional means. We hypothesized that a scavenger hunt would increase trainee comfortability with the app by 60% and improve information finding by 50% compared to baseline within a 9-month period.

Methods: Utilizing QualtricsXM, a survey was generated and disseminated to trainees rotating in the PICU in the form of a scavenger hunt with 11 questions asking respondents to search through the app for an answer to a certain question with hints provided. The questions were then followed by a survey assessing how well respondents knew the answers without using the application and how the scavenger hunt helped them learn to navigate that application.

Results: Within the 9 months, there were 25 responses (some incomplete), and 16 responses to the follow-up survey. In response to answering the 11 main questions, 66% reported not knowing the answers without using the app. When asked about the usefulness of the scavenger hunt in learning to use the app, 90% said it “probably or definitely” helped, 10% said it “might or might not” have helped, and 0 said it did not help.

Conclusions: The scavenger hunt was successful at increasing awareness and familiarity with the application and in helping residents to find answers to common PICU clinical questions with a readily accessible tool. There is a large learning curve in the PICU for trainees without the burden of mastering a new resource. By creating a fun game to help kickstart learning, we can help make rotating through the PICU and the complex pathology we encounter less intimidating and more approachable.