Description: 

Pediatric medicine is rapidly evolving, and care is increasingly complex—requiring expertise and coordination of people and processes across the care team. Morbidity and mortality are especially difficult for families and hospital staff. While some degree of morbidity and mortality is unavoidable, as a Children’s Center, we strive to prevent morbidities and mortalities and to learn from unexpected or unfortunate outcomes. These outcomes are often multifactorial, reflecting social determinants of health, challenging handoffs, delays in care, communication gaps, and systems issues. The goal of the PICU Morbidity & Mortality (M&M) CASE selection and conference is to provide a supportive learning environment to strengthen clinicians’ and care team knowledge, examine complex care situations, and discuss pediatric conditions, treatments, and processes that influence outcomes. The conference brings together multidisciplinary and multispecialty professionals to generate discussion, foster learning, and identify opportunities to improve care for patients with complex diseases and conditions. This monthly series provides structured review/selection of cases and broader conference discussions to address the need for in-depth case assessment using current evidence and expert perspectives. M&M provides an opportunity to assess complex situations, explore best practices, review relevant literature, leverage diverse expertise, and continually identify opportunities for collective improvement in pursuit of the highest quality of care and ongoing education.

Target Audience: 

Nurse Practitioner (NP)

Nurse, Registered (RN)

Physicians (MD or DO)

Physician Assistant (PA)

Learning Objectives: 

At the completion of this activity, learners will be able to:

1. Identify opportunities to improve quality of care, enhance patient safety, and advance professional education by examining adverse outcomes among pediatric patients cared for in the PICU within a multidisciplinary environment that brings together diverse perspectives and expertise.

2. Utilize evidence-based medicine and review of literature, when needed, to identify options for optimal care and treatment of complex and unusual pediatric patients.

3. Evaluate the relationships between multifactorial contributors to poor pediatric outcomes and apply knowledge to future complex cases.

4. Identify findings, recommendations, and develop follow-up plans for ongoing improvement, accountability, and compliance.

Assembly Bills 1195 & 241- Culturally Appropriate Care which is Free of Implicit Biases:

Learners are strongly encouraged to engage in self-directed learning related to the impact of implicit biases in this clinical area via the references provided below:

SDOH

• Perez-Kersey, P., Chan, T., & Tjoeng, Y. (2023). Social determinants of health and health equity in pediatric cardiology outcomes. Current Treatment Options in Pediatrics; 9: 284-301. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40746-023-00286-x
• Amdani, S., Bhimani, S., Boyle, G., Liu, W., Worley, S., Saarel, E. & Hsich, E. (2021). Racial and ethnic disparities persist in the current era of pediatric heart transplantation. Journal of cardiac failure; 27(9): 957-964. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cardfail.2021.05.027

Implicit Bias

• Schnierle, J., Christian-Brathwaite, N., & Louisias, M. (2019). Implicit bias: What every pediatrician should know about the effect of bias on health and future directions. Current Problems In Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care; 49(2): 34-44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cppeds.2019.01.003

Disclosure of Financial or In-Kind Commercial Support & Conflict of Interest

Craig Swanson has a financial relationship (consultant) with Sentec Inc. on the topic respiratory care. The ineligible financial relationship is not relevant and thus, no further mitigation is required. 

No one else involved in the planning or presentation of this educational activity have any relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. No financial or in-kind commercial support was received to produce or promote this educational activity.   

– Provider Designee/Verification: Fozia Ferozali, Ed.D