Planning for a Potential National Paediatric Bronchiolitis Surge: How Inter-Professional Education (Ipe) Can Be Used to Promote the Development of a More Collaborative Practiceready Workforce

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Bronchiolitis is the most common cause for paediatric respiratory hospital admissions in young children in the UK. Following the relaxation of international SARS-Cov-2 lockdown measures a potential national surge in cases was predicted. This highlighted the need to deliver an educational intervention to improve outcomes for these patients. Inter-Professional Education (IPE) was utilised in our hospital. METHOD(S) A team from the Adult Intensive Care Unit (AICU) and the Paediatric High Dependency Unit (PHDU) delivered an inter-professional teaching session focused on caring for the sick child with bronchiolitis. The patient journey was used as a framework to teach the core knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to clinically manage a child from the Emergency Department (ED) to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The session included a lecture about bronchiolitis, a paediatric skills tutorial and a simulation scenario. RESULT(S) 135 healthcare professionals from a range of disciplines involved in the care of children across the patient journey attended the teaching session which was delivered twelve times over a 3-month period. They completed a feedback questionnaire. One hundred and twenty-two (90%) reported an extremely high degree of satisfaction. Areas of development highlighted the following themes gaining theoretical knowledge, understanding equipment, performing drug calculations, preparing for intubation, assessing the need for chest physiotherapy and understanding teamworking. CONCLUSION(S) The teaching sessions have been used as a template for the development of further planned IPE teaching across a range of paediatric clinical cases and presentations, developing a more collaborative practice-ready workforce for the care of the sick child.