Resident Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Background: Diagnostic POCUS applications are emerging in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) and recent national surveys suggest strong support for POCUS training within NPM fellowship programs. Successful POCUS program development requires established infrastructural elements for the safe and effective translation of training to clinical practice. These elements include curriculum, image storage, documentation, quality assurance, and credentialing. Little is known about current diagnostic POCUS practices or programmatic infrastructure across NICUs within NPM fellowships. Objective: To conduct a national survey to assess the use and infrastructural elements of diagnostic POCUS program development within academic NPM fellowship programs. Design/Methods: With support from the National Neonatal POCUS Collaborative, a REDCap survey previously used for evaluation of POCUS program development within pediatric critical care fellowship programs was modified for NPM fellowship program assessment. Iterative pretesting and pilot testing was performed to assess relevance and clarity of the survey questions. A single educational leader within each of the 106 ACGME NPM fellowship programs was identified though personalized, precontact email correspondence. In January, the survey will be distributed to these 106 individuals, who will have 4 weeks to complete the survey. Data collected will include information about the NICU, availability of POCUS, fellow training, as well as current practices related to image storage, documentation, quality assurance, and credentialing. A maximum of 3 reminder emails will be sent during the 4 week period. Consent for use of survey results will be implied by participant’s completion. Data will be anonymized prior to analysis. Descriptive statistics will outline national trends in POCUS program development and subgroup analysis will evaluate results by program size ( < 10 vs >=10 fellows), and by presence or absence of POCUS-trained faculty as educational leaders. Analysis of results will be complete by April 1, 2024. This project is exempt from IRB approval.
