PC3101: In the Era of Precision Medicine: Precision Medical Education in Newborn Care

Background: Newborn medicine is a unique clinical environment where educators and learners from multiple specialties and levels of experience come together to teach, learn and apply the concepts of perinatal and neonatal medicine. Precision-based learning allows for creation of a learning ecology that can take into account learner and teacher diversity. Our goal is to build a precision-based newborn medicine curriculum that tailors learning objectives to the trainees’ backgrounds and learning styles as well as to the educators’ teaching techniques.

Methods: Core content specifications and learning objectives for newborn medicine trainees (pediatric residents, OB-GYN residents, family medicine residents and medical students on their pediatric core clerkship) were reviewed from the American Board of Pediatrics, American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, family medicine residency learning objectives, and pediatric core clerkship learning objectives. Findings were summarized through an iterative design process with review and revisions.
A list of 24 newborn topics was aggregated. They were categorized into four categories: Fetal and Perinatal Management, Birth and Neonatal Transition, Neonatal Diseases, Disorders and Conditions, and Routine Newborn Care. Each was determined to be appropriate for a pediatric resident, OB-GYN resident, family medicine resident or a medical student on their pediatric clerkship. The topic areas were laid out in a Venn diagram of overlapping topics to demonstrate how the curriculum can be easily individualized to the learner (Figure 1).
To validate this learning model, a 12-question survey made up of Likert, multiple choice and free text questions will be developed by a multi-specialty group using the modified Delphi method.
Survey question content will include: demographics, preferred method of learning, preferred teaching methodology and learning platform, learning topics and objectives, and mechanisms by which to demonstrate content mastery. After development, the survey will be distributed to learners and teachers involved with the newborn medicine service. Results will be analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square and t-test in July 2022.

Results: Findings from the surveys and validated learning model will be available for presentation at the NCE 2022 meeting.

Conclusion: Optimizing the educational environment for learners and educators can potentially maximize mastery of learning objectives and lay the groundwork for lifelong learning. Development of a precision-based newborn medicine curriculum can allow for the effective and efficient delivery of newborn medicine concepts in a diverse and unique clinical environment.