532 - Establishing Partnerships to Educate Pediatric Critical Care Providers in Resource-Limited Settings

Healthcare providers face many challenges when caring for critically ill children in resource-limited settings (RLS); with limited staffing and high acuity, non-clinical duties, such as trainee education, can be onerous and even unrealistic tasks. Advances in internet and broadband technologies have allowed dramatic gains in the quality and quantity of global communications, which has impacted a wide range of activities.

Objective:

We aimed to connect international pediatric critical care experts with pediatric critical care caregivers in RLS to provide modular, web-based education.

Design/Methods:

Each module consists of a pre-recorded lecture and an interactive session with intensivists, who were experts in the subject matter. From January 1, 2021 - August 30, 2022, a total of 105 teaching sessions took place involving nine different hospitals on a biweekly basis in Ghana, Haiti, Rwanda, and Nigeria.

Results:

These included 90 interactive sessions and 15 case report discussions.  There were approximately 20 health care professionals at each session for a total approximate attendance of 2000 over all the sessions. Over 25 intensivists from 20 different institutions and 7 countries have participated. Survey response rate was low (10%), but respondents felt overwhelmingly that both the recorded lecture and the subsequent interactive sessions were helpful in improving their understanding of the topic as seen in Figure 1.

Conclusion(s):

Our program has been successful at consistently delivering high-quality pediatric critical care education to an increasing number of learners in RLS by fostering the development of a network of international pediatric critical care providers.