P3.L225: You're on the air: an experiential learning curriculum on media advocacy for pediatric residents

Background: Pediatricians are a trusted source of information on child health, and media communication is an effective tool that allows physicians to provide accurate health information to the public. Currently, few residency programs give trainees any media communication training. A needs assessment of our pediatric residents showed 70% had no media advocacy experience with the most common cited barrier being discomfort with participation (41%). An experiential media training curriculum was developed to prepare residents to deliver injury prevention messages on the local news with an aim of improving resident comfort, knowledge, and skills in utilizing media communication.

Methods: This project was exempt from full IRB approval by our institution’s research board. Residents participated in a fall workshop focusing on injury prevention and a spring workshop teaching media skills. During the spring session, residents developed segments that later aired on the local news by one of the residents in each group. The program was assessed with pre- and post-intervention surveys with a series of Likert scale questions. Pre- and post- test results were compared with a Mann Whitney U test. Free response feedback was collected after completion of both sessions.

Results: 46 (68%) participants completed both pre- and post test surveys. Results showed significant improvement in all four categories assessed, with the largest effect size seen in comfort with and knowledge of media interaction. Smaller effect sizes were seen in desire to use media participation and knowledge of advising families on injury prevention (Image 2). The most common highlight of the sessions by participants was ability to practice in mock interviews (n=31) and the most common suggestion for improvement was increased opportunities to practice (n=10).

Conclusion: This curriculum resulted in significant improvement in resident knowledge and comfort with media participation and injury prevention messaging. Four resident-produced injury prevention segments were broadcast on the local news. To our knowledge, there are few initiatives that produce hands-on media advocacy in pediatric residency training programs. Like any survey, our results are subject to survey biases including acquiescence and social desirability bias. Our participants voiced a desire for increased hands-on practice beyond our sessions, and this project did lack objective measures to assess for improvement in media advocacy skills, thus next steps include construction of a scorable media participation simulation that would allow more opportunities for participants and objective assessment.