Pediatric Hospital Medicine 2016, cosponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Academic Pediatric Association (APA), and the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), took place July 28–31 in Chicago. Didn’t make it? Here are all the news, research, and talking points you need to know.
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Shape Your Brain to Avoid Burnout
Presenter: Lisa Zaoutis, MD, FHM
Amid the skyscrapers of the Windy City, Pediatric Hospital Medicine (PHM) 2016 swept into town, bringing with it the denizens of pediatric hospitalist programs across the country. Some 1,150 attendees, composed of hospitalists, PHM program leaders, and advanced-care practitioners, gathered to educate and inspire one another in the care of hospitalized children.
Lisa Zaoutis, MD, FHM, director of the pediatric residency program at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, kicked off the conference with the opening plenary. Initially titled “North Star and Space,” she quickly changed the title to “Changing Our Minds.” Touching on the disconnect between positive experiences that bring physicians into pediatric hospital medicine and negative experiences that often drive behavior, she started with the beginning: the evolution of our brains.
“We are wired toward the negative,” Dr. Zaoutis said. “We are Teflon for positive experiences and Velcro for negative experiences.”
Delving deeper into neuroanatomy, Dr. Zaoutis spoke of “amygdala hijack,” where chronic stress inherent to the professional lives of pediatric hospitalists leads to anxiety responses that are faster, more robust, and more easily triggered.
But all is not lost, Dr. Zaoutis noted, as our brains are more plastic than previously known. The “neural Darwinism” of our brains, she said, leads to epigenetic intracellular changes, more sensitive synapses, improved blood flow, and even new cells as a result of experience-dependent neuroplasticity. For example, London taxi drivers have thicker white matter in their hippocampus as a result of learning London city streets, and mindfulness meditators have thicker gray matter in regions that control attention and self-insight.
Key Takeaways
The lesson for pediatric hospitalists, according Dr. Zaoutis, is that you can shape your brain for greater joy.
“Consciously choose activities” that counter our evolutionary negativity bias, Dr. Zaoutis said.
Here’s how to do it:
- Have a positive experience. (You can create one or retrieve a prior one.)
- Enrich it and install it by dwelling on it for at least 15–30 seconds.
- Absorb it into your body, which may require somatizing it. (Dr. Zaoutis presses her hand into her chest to aid in this.)
Further, spread this to your group by the old medical training technique of “see one, do one, teach one.” See if you can start your sign-out with the best thing that happened to you in the week. Most important, start with observing yourself.
Weijen Chang, MD, SFHM, is pediatric editor of The Hospitalist. He is associate clinical professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and a hospitalist at both UCSD Medical Center and Rady Children’s Hospital. Send comments and questions to [email protected].
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New AAP Guideline on Evaluating, Managing Febrile Infants
Presenter: Kenneth Roberts, MD
One of PHM16’s most highly attended sessions was an update on the anticipated AAP guidelines for febrile infants ages 7–90 days. The updated guidelines stress the need to separate individual components of serious bacterial infections (UTI, bacteremia, and meningitis) as the incidence and clinical course can vary greatly in this population.
The inclusion criteria for infants for this upcoming algorithm require an infant to be full-term (37–43 weeks’ gestation), aged 7–90 days, well-appearing, and presenting with a temperature of 38°C.