753 - Implementation of a Lesion-Based Curriculum for Pediatric Cardiology Trainees

Sunday, April 30, 2023

3:30 PM – 6:00 PM ET

Poster Number: 753
Publication Number: 753.304

Michael Kim, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States; Tyler Brown, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, United States; Yan Yang-Vanover, CCHMC, Loveland, OH, United States; Ashley E.. Neal, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States; Eunice Hahn, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States; Ivan Wilmot, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States

Presenting Author(s)

Michael Kim, DO

Cardiology Fellow
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

Background: Pediatric cardiology training programs are tasked with creating curricula which successfully prepare trainees for board certification and independent practice. The American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) subspecialty content outline and entrustable professional activities combined with the ACGME subspecialty milestones provide a framework of requisite trainee knowledge, skills, and attitudes with benchmarks for assessment. However, no data exists to guide best practices for content organization. Fellowship program curriculum is program-dependent, highly variable, and often unstructured.

Objective:

The goals of our study were to: 1) create a structured pediatric cardiology fellowship curriculum organized by cardiac lesions; 2) assess initial reactions from faculty and fellows; 3) create review materials for trainees to be used with the curriculum.

Design/Methods: This study was started in July 2022 at a large tertiary pediatric hospital with a pediatric cardiology fellowship program of 15 categorical fellows. The lecture schedule was reorganized by cardiac lesions following the 2022 ABP content specifications over an 11-month period. Review questions were created by the chief fellow and faculty experts and disseminated monthly. Surveys were sent to participating faculty and categorical fellows biannually. Survey items consisted of both quantitative and qualitative items pertaining to the curriculum and review questions.

Results: Six months post-intervention, 10 fellows (63%) and 13 faculty provided initial feedback. The lesion-based approach was rated “helpful” to "very helpful” by 90% of fellows and 100% would recommend this curricular approach for other fellows. 90% of fellow respondents found the review questions relevant and helpful to supplement the conferences and 90% wanted additional review questions. Of faculty respondents, 92% felt the new curriculum format was a positive change and 92% would recommend this structure to other programs. 61% of faculty respondents felt trainee conference engagement was higher post-intervention.

Conclusion(s): Pediatric cardiology fellows and faculty at our institution recommend a structured, lesion-based curriculum based on the ABP content outline to other programs. Fellows felt regularly incorporating review questions were helpful and would appreciate additional review content. Feedback is ongoing and additional data is being collected to optimize content delivery and the quality of review questions. Future studies will be directed at refining the curriculum and review content.