Abstract 4140515: Children’s Heartbeat: Improving Global Knowledge and Care of Pediatric Arrhythmias

Background: Expertise in pediatric electrophysiology (PEP) is lacking in most low- and middle- income countries (LMIC), yet arrhythmias are a ubiquitous and common pediatric clinical problem. Strategies to disseminate PEP education are essential to improve patient care. Children’s Heartbeat (CHB) is a video-conferencing program using the Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO TM ) model to disseminate PEP knowledge to clinicians in LMIC. The impact of CHB in disseminating PEP is unknown. Objective: We evaluated the impact of CHB in improving clinicians’ confidence in PEP. Methods: Since CHB inception in December 2020, monthly cross-sectional surveys of CHB participants, including longitudinal evaluation of participants’ confidence caring for PEP patients, were performed using a 5-point Likert scale, with 1 being low-confidence and 5 high-confidence. Average session participation and post-session evaluations were used as indicators of viewer engagement. Results: CHB currently has 181 registrants from 31 countries, with 53% working in an LMIC (Figure 1). Participants include nurses, medical students, physician assistants, general cardiologists, and pediatric and adult electrophysiologists. Only 30% have PEP training; 53% do not have access to PEP consultation in their workplace. Average session participation was 64, with an additional 121 viewing recorded sessions posted after the live program. On average, participants’ confidence in PEP increased from 2.8 before to 4.0 after CHB sessions (Figure 2). Conclusions: CHB successfully disseminates PEP knowledge to LMIC globally and increases clinicians’ confidence in PEP conditions. Future directions include increasing viewership by pediatric cardiology trainees and pediatric cardiologists in rural regions in high-income countries, partnering with international pediatric and cardiology groups to expand program outreach, and evaluating the direct impact of CHB on patient care in LMIC.