POPCoRN One-Pagers: Educational Materials for Pediatric Providers Caring for Adults

Problem

Due to COVID-19, medical education has been upended by cancelled classes and conferences. Additionally, new educational needs arose quickly, as pediatric providers were asked to care for adults. The fast-paced cognitive overload due to the pandemic, paired with an emergently expanded scope of practice, necessitated rapid development of novel educational efforts. The Pediatric Overflow Planning - Contingency Response Network (POPCoRN) was created as a multi-institutional collaboration to increase the capacity of pediatric facilities to care for adult patients and to create educational materials to support pediatric providers in caring for adults.

Approach

Identifying succinct, one-page documents (“one-pagers”) as a useful format to share information, our team established a protocol for creating, reviewing, and disseminating material to those providers most in need of this information. Through a multidisciplinary and voluntary collaboration of over 100 trainees, attendings, and advanced practice providers, “living” documents were created to serve pediatric-trained providers in the care of hospitalized adults.

We created an inventory of high-yield topics to address the knowledge gap challenging a pediatric hospitalist while caring for adults. Students, residents, and attendings helped to create documents from varied sources, including peer-reviewed journals. These were then formatted by a dedicated team to provide consistency across all one-pagers. Next, these documents were evaluated by an adult hospitalist to evaluate the quality, accuracy, and flow of content and a pediatric hospitalist for applicability and clarity. A final review was performed by a member of our Educational Steering Committee for quality control. This review process was streamlined to ensure a balance between quality and rapid dissemination.

Outcomes to Date

Since the inception of the POPCoRNetwork (March 29, 2020), there have been 54,841 views. Over 95% of traffic came from the United States, with the most visits (11.1%) coming from New York State. The Education Materials has been the most visited section of the website. The most popular one-pager content was “Cross-Cover IM” (24.7%, 789 visits), a series of 7 one-pagers covering common questions and emergencies seen in Internal Medicine, followed by Cardiology (16.3%, 520), and General Medicine (10.5%, 327). Additionally, we have received excellent feedback about the utility of our documents in the on-the-ground care of adults in previously pediatric predominant areas.

Next Steps/Planned Curricular Adaptations

The most up-to-date versions of the documents reside on the POPCoRN website with QR codes embedded which allow for quick reference to the website for topics within an organ system. These collaborative “living” documents allow for continuous feedback and up-to-date information. Continued enhancement and assessment of utility will allow the POPCoRNetwork one-pagers to be ever-green in their applicability to caring for adults.

We are working on developing a phone-based application to increase accessibility to those without robust internet or data connections. As the COVID-19 pandemic becomes less of a surging crisis, we hope this no-cost repository of consolidated resources could be disseminated and adapted as curricula for clerkships, incoming first-year residents, or pediatric trainees learning the transitional care of adolescents and adults with chronic childhood conditions admitted to pediatric hospitals.