382 - Piloting a Pediatric Emergency Care Capacity Self-Assessment Tool for Low and Middle-Income Country Settings: A Mixed Methods Study

1) Develop and pilot a self-assessment tool to evaluate pediatric emergency care capacity in LMIC hospitals. 2) Obtain feedback on the assessment tool through a mixed methods approach using quantitative data from the self-assessment tool followed by qualitative interviews of hospital staff who piloted the tool in their LMIC hospital.

Design/Methods:

This is a prospective cross-sectional mixed methods descriptive study to develop and evaluate a self-assessment tool for pediatric emergency care capacity in LMIC hospitals. The study uses an explanatory sequential mixed methods design with a quantitative self-assessment, followed by qualitative interviews to explain the quantitative results. The self-assessment tool operationalizes technical contents of existing standards and guidelines from the AAP, WHO, International Federation of Emergency Medicine into a quantifiable and measurable assessment. The study assesses EDs across different regions of the African continent. The self-assessment was completed by healthcare providers from participating hospitals. The primary outcome is a pediatric emergency capacity report for participating hospitals based on quantitative data analyzed using descriptive statistics. The secondary outcome measure will be thematic responses from interviews with participants regarding the self-assessment tool’s relevance and feasibility for their practice setting.

Results: Sixteen participating sites piloted the assessment tool (76% completion rate). The assessment tool identified variability and areas for improvement in domains including hospital infrastructure and services, protocols and policies, staffing and training, equipment, consumables, and medicines. Additional tables will review the quantitative data findings.

Conclusion(s): Participating hospitals on the African continent have gaps in pediatric emergency care capacity identified by the new online self-assessment tool. The anticipated secondary outcome is that a self-assessment tool evaluating pediatric emergency care capacity is desired by LMIC hospitals, with modifications needed to improve the self-assessment tool’s relevance for future use in other LMIC contexts.