Over the past 10 years, much has changed in the world of pediatric hospital medicine. The annual national PHM conference sponsored by the Society of Hospital Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the Academic Pediatric Association (APA) is robust; textbooks and journal articles in the field abound; and networks and training in research, quality improvement, and education are successful and ongoing.
Dr. Sandra Gage
Much of this did not exist or was in its infancy back in 2010. Since then, it has grown and greatly evolved. In parallel, medicine and society have changed. These influences on health care, along with the growth of the field over time, prompted a review and revision of the 2010 PHM Core Competencies published by SHM. With support from the society, the Pediatric Hospital Medicine Special Interest Group launched the plan for revision of the PHM Core Competencies.
The selected editors included Sandra Gage, MD, PhD, SFHM, of Phoenix Children’s Hospital; Erin Stucky Fisher, MD, MHM, of UCSD/Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego; Jennifer Maniscalco, MD, MPH, of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Sofia Teferi, MD, SFHM, a pediatric hospitalist based at Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond, Va. They began their work in 2017 along with six associate editors, meeting every 2 weeks via conference call, dividing the work accordingly.
Dr. Teferi served in a new and critical role as contributing editor. She described her role as a “sweeper” of sorts, bringing her unique perspective to the process. “The other three members are from academic settings, and I’m from a community setting, which is very different,” Dr. Teferi said. “I went through all the chapters to ensure they were inclusive of the community setting.”
According to Dr. Gage, “the purpose of the original PHM Core Competencies was to define the roles and responsibilities of a PHM practitioner. In the intervening 10 years, the field has changed and matured, and we have solidified our role since then.”
Today’s pediatric hospitalists, for instance, may coordinate care in EDs, provide inpatient consultations, engage or lead quality improvement programs, and teach. The demands for pediatric hospital care today go beyond the training provided in a standard pediatric residency. The core competencies need to provide the information necessary, therefore, to ensure pediatric hospital medicine is practiced at its most informed level.
A profession transformed
At the time of the first set of core competencies, there were over 2,500 members in three core societies in which pediatric hospitalists were members: the AAP, the APA, and SHM. As of 2017, those numbers have swelled as the care for children in the hospital setting has shifted away from these patients’ primary care providers.
Dr. Sofia Teferi
The original core competencies included 54 chapters, designed to be used independent of the others. They provided a foundation for the creation of pediatric hospital medicine and served to standardize and improve inpatient training practices.
For the new core competencies, every single chapter was reviewed line by line, Dr. Gage said. Many chapters had content modified, and new chapters were added to reflect the evolution of the field and of medicine. “We added about 14 new chapters, adjusted the titles of others, and significantly changed the content of over half,” Dr. Gage explained. “They are fairly broad changes, related to the breadth of the practice today.”
Dr. Teferi noted that practitioners can use the updated competencies with additions to the service lines that have arisen since the last version. “These include areas like step down and newborn nursery, things that weren’t part of our portfolio 10 years ago,” she said. “This reflects the fact that often you’ll see a hospital leader who might want to add to a hospitalist’s portfolio of services because there is no one else to do it. Or maybe community pediatrics no longer want to treat babies, so we add that. The settings vary widely today and we need the competencies to address that.”
Practices within these settings can also vary widely. Teaching, palliative care, airway management, critical care, and anesthesia may all come into play, among other factors. Research opportunities throughout the field also continue to expand.
Dr. Fisher said that the editors and associate editors kept in mind the fact that not every hospital would have all the resources necessary at its fingertips. “The competencies must reflect the realities of the variety of community settings,” she said. “Also, on a national level, the majority of pediatric patients are not seen in a children’s hospital. Community sites are where pediatric hospitalists are not only advocates for care, but can be working with limited resources – the ‘lone soldiers.’ We wanted to make sure the competencies reflect that reality and environment community site or not; academic site or not; tertiary care site or not; rural or not – these are overlapping but independent considerations for all who practice pediatric hospital medicine – a Venn diagram, and the PHM core competencies try to attend to all of those.”
This made Dr. Teferi’s perspective all the more important. “While many, including other editors and associate editors, work in community sites, Dr. Teferi has this as her unique and sole focus. She brought a unique viewpoint to the table,” Dr. Fisher said.
A goal of the core competencies is to make it possible for a pediatric hospitalist to move to a different practice environment and still provide the same level of high-quality care. “It’s difficult but important to grasp the concepts and competencies of various settings,” Dr. Fisher said. “In this way, our competencies are a parallel model to the adult hospitalist competencies.”
The editors surveyed practitioners across the country to gather their input on content, and brought on topic experts to write the new chapters. “If we didn’t have an author for a specific chapter or area from the last set of competencies, we came to a consensus on who the new one should be,” Dr. Gage explained. “We looked for known and accepted experts in the field by reviewing the literature and conference lecturers at all major PHM meetings.”
Once the editors and associate editors worked with authors to refine their chapter(s), the chapters were sent to multiple external reviewers including subgroups of SHM, AAP, and APA, as well as a variety of other associations. They provided input that the editors and associate editors collated, reviewed, and incorporated according to consensus and discussion with the authors.