The Use of the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia's Pedi Crisis 2.0 Mobile Application as an Educational Assessment Tool for Pediatric Anesthesiology Fellows: A Prospective, Randomized, Controlled Multi-Center Study.

BACKGROUND Anesthesiologists manage life-threatening, critical events in a fast-paced, high-distraction atmosphere, with little time to deliberate about treatment options. The Society for Pediatric Anesthesia developed the Pedi Crisis 2.0 Mobile Application to assist in managing critical pediatric perioperative events. We hypothesized that the application could be used as a formal educational assessment tool in pediatric anesthesiology fellowship training and developed a one-hour classroom examination designed to assess the impact of the application on fellows' knowledge of the management of pediatric critical events. We sought to evaluate whether the just-in-time knowledge provided by the application leads to improved testing outcomes compared with baseline knowledge alone. METHODS Pediatric anesthesia fellows participated in a one-hour session with ten pediatric critical event scenarios (stems). Each scenario presented a case with open-ended questions on standard management. Participants were randomized to answer half of the stems using the application (APP) and half of the stems not using the application (NO APP). Instead, they utilized knowledge from routine practice, memory recall, and alternative electronic resources. Two blinded reviewers graded answers, and the average percent of correct answers was calculated. RESULTS Fifty-one pediatric anesthesiology fellows from four institutions enrolled in the study. Six fellows were improperly randomized and excluded. The total percent correct scores for stems 1/3/5/7/9 and 2/4/6/8/10 were significantly higher for the APP condition (78.7% vs 45.4%, 59% vs 40%, p<0.0001). The percent correct answers for individual stems varied; the APP condition scores were always statistically higher than the NO APP condition (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Pediatric anesthesiology fellows were significantly more successful at describing the management of pediatric critical events when using the Pedi Crisis 2.0 application compared to not using the application. Thus, we believe that cognitive aids, such as Pedi Crisis 2.0, should be an integral component of pediatric anesthesia fellowship training curricula.