Pediatric Emergency Medicine Physicians Are at Risk for Deterioration of Procedural Skills

Investigators retrospectively quantified the number of critical procedures performed by pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) faculty and fellows on children presenting to a tertiary care pediatric emergency department (ED) with approximately 90,000 annual visits.

Over a 1-year period, 261 critical procedures were performed on 194 children (0.2% of visits). These were orotracheal intubation (147), intraosseous line placement (41), pharmacologic cardioversion (23), tube thoracostomy (18), central venous line placement (15), needle thoracostomy (9), electrocardioversion (6), defibrillation (1), and pericardiocentesis (1).

Of 41 PEM faculty, 61% did not perform any critical procedure, while 98% supervised at least one; 63% did not perform a single …