Caring for Children With Medical Complexity: A Clinical, Patient-Focused Curriculum.

Introduction: Caring for children with medical complexity (CMC) requires specialized knowledge and skills. However, no standardized curricula are used across training programs as institutions have varying needs and resources. Methods: We created a patient-focused, interactive curriculum for two CMC topics: feeding/nutrition and pain/irritability. We integrated the 45-minute sessions into morning protected patient-care time on an inpatient pediatric team at an urban tertiary care hospital. Targeted toward all pediatric residents and medical students rotating in inpatient pediatrics over a 12-month period, the sessions used a mix of didactic, discussion, and hands-on activities. Learners on one of two inpatient teams received the curriculum, while those on the other received a curriculum unrelated to CMC and served as a control group. Both groups completed retrospective pre/post self-assessments to evaluate self-efficacy with respect to the learning objectives. Results: Over the 12-month period, 72 surveys were completed for the feeding/nutrition session, 78 surveys for the pain/irritability session, and 42 control surveys. The intervention group saw the greatest increase in self-efficacy scores generally in the feeding/nutrition session. All eight learning objectives saw significant improvement in self-efficacy scores for the intervention group. There was significantly greater improvement in self-efficacy for the intervention group compared to the control for all eight learning objectives. Discussion: Through this patient-focused curriculum, learners had improved self-efficacy scores compared to the natural learning occurring on the inpatient service. The curriculum could be adapted to fit the needs of other institutions and provides a practical, hands-on approach to learning about caring for CMC.

Social media use and COVID-19 vaccine status among a nationally representative population sample in Uganda.

Objectives: The effect of social media on COVID-19 vaccination behavior is sub-Saharan Africa is unclear. We conducted a study to determine social media use among a random nationally representative sample of adults in Uganda and assessed the association between recent social media use and COVID-19 vaccination uptake. Methods: We used data from the 2020 general population survey in Uganda, the Population-based HIV Impact Assessment Survey, to identify a probability sample for a mobile phone survey and included nonphone owners in the phone survey by asking phone owners to pass the phone. Results: In March 2022, of the 1022 survey participants, 213 (20%) did not own a mobile phone, 842 (80%) owned a mobile phone, of whom 199 (24%) indicated social media use, and 643 (76%) of whom did not use social media. Among all participants, the most frequent source of COVID-19 vaccine information was radio. Overall, 62% reported receiving the COVID-19 vaccination. The multivariable logistic regression model found that social media use was not associated with vaccination status. Conclusion: Social media users in this population sample from Uganda-who were mainly young, urban residents with higher educational attainment-continue to utilize TV, radio and health care workers for public health messages, thus the Government of Uganda should continue to conduct public health communication through these mediums.