Journal of Hospital Medicine Releases 2020 Revision to The Pediatric Hospital Medicine Core Competencies

Revision Provides Framework for Graduate and Continuing Medical Education to Reflect Evolving Roles, Expectations of Pediatric Hospitalists

The Journal of Hospital Medicine (JHM), the official peer-reviewed journal of the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), recently released The Pediatric Hospital Medicine Core Competencies: 2020 Revision. First published in 2010, The Pediatric Hospital Medicine Core Competencies serve to define roles and responsibilities of pediatric hospital medicine practitioners, thereby helping to standardize and improve consistency of care. Over the past ten years, the field has changed and matured, necessitating an update to reflect the advances and evolution in medicine and in the practice of pediatric hospital medicine.

“Pediatric hospital medicine (PHM) continues at its core to be about delivering the best care to hospitalized children and their families – and to the teaching, systems improvement and research that supports this,” notes Dr. Erin Fisher, a primary editor of the supplement. “This revision of the PHM Core Competencies addresses key changes in healthcare with critical additions, such as acute and chronic behavioral health and the role of the hospitalist in leveraging the inpatient experience to address more than the acute illness.”

The supplement includes 66 chapters on both clinical and nonclinical topics, divided into four sections:

• Common Clinical Diagnoses and Conditions
• Core Skills
• Specialized Services
• Healthcare Systems: Supporting and Advancing Child Health

The 2020 revision of The Pediatric Hospital Medicine Core Competencies reflects the recent changes in the practice and educational environments of pediatric hospitalists to inform education, training and career development for pediatric hospitalists across all training pathways and practice settings. To ensure this progress was properly captured, the editors sought input from pediatric hospitalists across the country and recruited experts in the field to write new chapters. New focus areas include mental and behavioral health issues, infection care and antimicrobial stewardship, with many other chapters undergoing extensive revisions.

“Every effort was made to include input from practitioners across the breadth of our field,” states Dr. Sandra Gage, another primary editor of the PHM Core Competencies. “To ensure adequate inclusion of the community hospitalist perspective, we established a new editorial role, the contributing editor.”

Editors included Jennifer Maniscalco, MD, MPH, of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, FL; Sandra Gage, MD, PhD, SFHM, of Phoenix Children’s Hospital; Sofia Teferi, MD, SFHM, of MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC; and Erin Stucky Fisher, MD, MHM, of UCSD/Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, CA. They began their work in 2017 along with six associate editors, dividing the work accordingly. The SHM Pediatrics Special Interest Group supported the initiation of the revision.

Read the full supplement here and explore more from the Journal of Hospital Medicine at journalofhospitalmedicine.com.

About the Journal of Hospital Medicine:

The Journal of Hospital Medicine is the premier, ISI-indexed publication for the specialty of hospital medicine and official journal of the Society of Hospital Medicine. Published by Frontline Medical Communications, the journal advances excellence in hospital medicine as a defined specialty through the dissemination of research, evidence-based clinical care, and advocacy of safe, effective care for hospitalized patients. For more information, please visit journalofhospitalmedicine.com and follow the Journal of Hospital Medicine on Twitter @JHospMedicine.

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