Feasibility of Using Bacteriophage Therapy to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality Associated with Spinal Epidural Abscesses.

Background: The aim of this study was to determine the feasibility of using bacteriophage therapeutics in spinal epidural abscess (SEA) by reviewing the causes and outcomes of SEA at a single institution and testing a bacteriophage for activity against preserved SEA clinical isolates.

Materials And Methods: Medical records were reviewed of patients that received incision and drainage for SEA at a single medical center. Causative organisms, incidence of coinciding bacteremia and outcomes were recorded.

Harnessing the Humanities to Foster Staff Resilience: An Annual Arts and Humanities Rounds at a Children's Hospital.

Working in healthcare can be fulfilling, meaningful, and sometimes exhausting. Creative endeavors may be one way to foster personal resilience in healthcare providers. In this article, we describe an annual arts and humanities program, the Ludwig Rounds, developed at a large academic children's hospital.

Physician well-being: Special considerations in pediatrics.

Helping children realize their potential brings both great joy and a powerful sense of meaning to the lives of clinicians. Nevertheless, working with children and families can place unique stresses on pediatric practitioners, and can pose particular challenges to the personal well-being of those who care for ill and injured children. This paper details the unique stressors that pediatricians experience, as well as the positive factors that shape the work of pediatricians caring for children and adolescents.

Building a Global Health Workforce in North America.

Globally, significant progress in health equity for children has been made, but much work remains. This article discusses why and how the pediatric community in North America is building a global health (GH) workforce, for domestic "local global" and "international global child health" settings. With a focus on children and families, training this workforce entails attaining GH competencies in medical students, residents, fellows, allied medical professionals, and upskilling current practitioners.

The pediatrics milestones: initial evidence for their use as learning road maps for residents.

Objective: As the next step in competency-based medical education, the Pediatrics Milestone Project seeks to provide a learner-centered approach to training and assessment. To help accomplish this goal, this study sought to determine how pediatric residents understand, interpret, and respond to the Pediatrics Milestones.

Methods: Cognitive interviews with 48 pediatric residents from all training levels at 2 training programs were conducted.

Pediatrics milestone project: next steps toward meaningful outcomes assessment.

In the September 2010 issue of JGME, the Pediatric Milestones Working Group published "The Pediatrics Milestones: Conceptual Framework, Guiding Principles, and Approach to Development", a document that describes the construction of the first iteration of the Pediatric Milestones. These Milestones were developed by the Working Group as a group of practical behavioral expectations for each of the 52 sub-competencies. In constructing these Milestones, the authors were cognizant of the need to ground the Milestones themselves in evidence, theories or other conceptual frameworks that would provide the basis for the ontogeny of development for each sub-competency.

The pediatrics milestones: conceptual framework, guiding principles, and approach to development.

Background: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) have partnered to initiate the Pediatrics Milestone Project to further refine the 6 ACGME competencies and to set performance standards as part of the continued commitment to document outcomes of training and program effectiveness.

Intervention: Members of the Pediatrics Milestone Project Working Group searched the medical literature and beyond to create a synopsis of models and evidence for a developmental ontogeny of the elements for 52 subcompetencies. For each subcompetency, we created a series of Milestones, grounded in the literature.

A new framework for quality partnerships in Children's Hospitals.

Children's hospitals and their affiliated departments of pediatrics often pursue separate programs in quality and safety; by integrating these programs, they can accelerate progress. Hospital executives and pediatric department chairs from 14 children's hospitals have been exploring practical approaches for integrating quality programs. Three components provide focus: (1) alignment of quality priorities and resources across the organizations; (2) education and training for physicians in the science of improvement; and (3) professional development and career progression for physicians in recognition of quality-improvement activities.

Pediatric residents' and continuity clinic preceptors' perceptions of the effects of restricted work hours on their learning relationship.

Objective: The effects of the Work Hour Standard (WHS) on continuity of care and quality of education has stimulated much discussion, yet little is known about how it affects the resident-continuity clinic preceptor (CCP) dyad, the only longitudinal learning relationship in pediatric residency. This case study explored residents' and CCPs' perceptions of the effects of restricted work hours on their learning relationship.

Methods: Direct observation of third-year pediatric residents (n = 10) and their CCPs (n = 10) was carried out in continuity clinic (CC) for 5 months; both groups attended clinic before and after the WHS.