Description: 

Pediatric Cardiothoracic Morbidity & Mortality Conference Regularly Scheduled Series: Pediatric medicine is an extremely rewarding but challenging field. Pediatric morbidity and mortality is especially hard on family and hospital staff who have become so invested in these patients’ care. Some degree of morbidity and mortality will always be expected, but as a designated Children’s hospital, we strive to reduce our M&M to as low as possible and to learn from cases where unexpected or unfortunate outcomes occurred. Often, these outcomes are multifactorial in the making – ranging from social determinants of health to challenging handoffs, communication issues, systems issues, etc. This M&M conference series will monthly discuss Pediatric Cardiothoracic morbidity and mortality. This conference series will address the gap/need for discussion of cases and current and expert information to provide the best patient care management for complicated challenging pediatric cardiothoracic patients.

Target Audience: 

Nurse Practitioner (NP)

Nurse, Registered (RN)

Physicians (MD or DO)

Other Healthcare Professionals

Learning Objectives:

After Attending this Activity, Learners Should be Able to:

1. Utilize evidence-based medicine to identify care and treatment options for optimal treatment of complex and unusual pediatric cardiothoracic patients.

2. Demonstrate Cultural Humility in interactions with families of diverse cultures and belief systems and how they perceived health and illness and responded to various diseases, symptoms and treatments.

3. Identify and proactively address social determinants of health that increase risk of poor pediatric cardiothoracic health outcomes.

4. Evaluate the relationships between multifactorial contributors to poor pediatric cardiothoracic outcomes so as to apply such learnings to future complex cases.

Providing Culturally Appropriate Care which is Free of Implicit Biases (AB 1195 & 241):

Learners are strongly encouraged to engage in self-directed learning related to the impact of implicit biases in this clinical area via the references provided below:

• • Perez-Kersey, P., Chan, T., & Tjoeng, Y. (2023). Social determinants of health and health equity in pediatric cardiology outcomes. Current Treatment Options in Pediatrics; 9: 284-301. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40746-023-00286-x
  • Amdani, S., Bhimani, S., Boyle, G., Liu, W., Worley, S., Saarel, E. & Hsich, E. (2021). Racial and ethnic disparities persist in the current era of pediatric heart transplantation. Journal of cardiac failure; 27(9): 957-964. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cardfail.2021.05.027
  • Schnierle, J., Christian-Brathwaite, N., & Louisias, M. (2019). Implicit bias: What every pediatrician should know about the effect of bias on health and future directions. Current Problems In Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care; 49(2): 34-44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cppeds.2019.01.003
  • Tervalon, M. & Murray-Garcia, J. (1998). Cultural humility versus cultural competence: A critical distinction in defining physician training outcomes in multicultural education. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved; 9(2): 117-125. doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2010.0233

Disclosure of Financial or In-Kind Commercial Support & Conflict of Interest

No one involved in the planning or presentation of this educational activity have any relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. No financial or in-kind commercial support was received to produce or promote this educational activity.   

– Provider Designee/Verification:  Kerri Maya, PhD(c), MSL, RN, NPD-BC