Development of goals and objectives for pediatric hospital medicine fellowship curricula

GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF PEDIATRIC HOSPITAL MEDICINE FELLOWSHIPS Pediatric hospital medicine (PHM) has experienced incredible growth in the last 20 years, including the creation of.50 PHM fellowships since the first program in 2003. In 2013, a National Pediatric Hospital Medicine Leaders Conference concluded that the best path forward for the field would be subspecialty certification with a 2-year accredited fellowship.¹ This process culminated in formal recognition of PHM as a subspecialty by the American Board of Medical Specialties in 2016 and the first American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) certification examination in 2019.^2,3 Also, in 2019, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) published requirements for PHM fellowships and began accrediting programs.⁴ Established PHM fellowships and programs in development now need to implement standardized curricular components to improve the consistency and educational quality of training and be compliant with ACGME accreditation requirements. During the initial period of PHM fellowship expansion, before American Board of Medical Specialties recognition of PHM as a subspecialty, PHM fellowship program directors (PDs) mobilized and formed a national PHM Fellowship Directors' Council to oversee the evolution of PHM fellowships and provide a community for collaboration and development of shared resources. In 2014, the council created subcommittees to address areas of need within PHM fellowship programs. These included the curriculum subcommittee, which was composed of both new and established PDs as well as 2 community hospitalist representatives, all with specific interest and skills in curriculum development. Between 2014 and 2016, the council, led by the curriculum subcommittee, created a standardized 2-year fellowship curricular framework to reflect the competencies of pediatric hospitalists and meet future board certification requirements.^5,6 This curricular framework was developed through an iterative process, with input from stakeholders representing fellowship PDs, fellowship graduates, and leaders in PHM and within medical education at large as well as clinical experts from a variety of practice settings, including community, internal medicine-pediatric, and newborn and/or neonatal hospitalists. The council recognized that, despite the curricular framework, the breadth and depth of PHM could still result in different program areas of emphasis and varied educational experiences. Therefore, the council set out to standardize the goals and objectives for each curricular component so that fellows and program leaders could have a common understanding of the learning goals for each educational experience.