Preparing US Hospitals for Pediatric Reunification through an Educational Series: A Pilot Program

Introduction: Pediatric reunification is a critical component of hospital disaster planning. Timely reunification has shown improved outcomes for children, yet many hospitals fail to have a plan. The U.S. Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response funded Region V for Kids, a Pediatric Center of Excellence for standardizing pediatric disaster preparedness. A Reunification Workgroup was formed within this center to determine if an educational series would improve pediatric reunification plans for U.S. hospitals. Methods: This pilot project is a mixed-methods study including nine children’s hospitals from six states. Hospitals were pre-surveyed in May 2023 and post-surveyed after completion of the educational series in July 2024. The series comprises five modules: Patient Tracking, Facility Logistics, Information Sharing, Plan Activation, and Recovery. Modules were developed from deficits revealed via a gap analysis from the presurvey and virtually presented each month from January through May 2024 to emergency managers and physicians. Sessions were also recorded for self-guided learning. The audience was polled live for immediate feedback during each virtual session. Results: Live polling questions included presentation helpfulness, speaker knowledge, presentation content, and session expectations. The post-survey solicited information on reunification knowledge enhancement, relevancy, and changes to clinical practice, the virtual experience, independent learning opportunities, and ease of the online learning platform. Using a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree, all modules averaged above 4, with a range of 3 to 5 in both polling and post-survey questions. Descriptive results indicated that modules were concise, informative, relevant, and practical. Conclusion: This pilot is the first educational series developed for standardizing and improving pediatric reunification plans in the U.S. The project used knowledge deficits to improve education, strategy, and guidance for reunification planning. Similar educational series should be considered in pediatric reunification development for hospitals globally.