The goal of PediatricEducation.org is to build a pediatric virtual learning community. The project’s hypothesis is that residents, fellows, and staff physicians practicing pediatrics can broaden and deepen their knowledge through the use of a continuing education program delivered daily in small granules and integrated into their workflow in the form of pediatric cases. Over time, these cases will aggregate into an unstructured curriculum of pediatric topics that will closely parallel the structured curriculum of a pediatric residency, fellowship and continuing medical education program. Engaging in discussions related to these cases will also result in the development of educational collaborative relationships.

To place the learning in a clinical context, each case begins with a question, and the case is then used to illustrate and discuss the question, thus creating a form of situated learning that is focused on the discussion that occurs at a higher level after the diagnosis is made.

A new pediatrics case is added weekly and in the first 18 months there were 75 cases covering all age ranges (including fetal medicine and young adults) and all specialties (e.g. allergy, genetics, travel medicine, dentistry, ethics). Out of 127 symptoms and 707 diseases/problems identified for inclusion in this project, 76 (51%) and 94 (13.3%), respectively, have been covered to date. Qualitative analysis of 100 user-submitted comment forms showed that a broad spectrum of learners - from students, residents and fellows to pediatric health care providers (i.e. nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians) and professors in the domains of emergency medicine, family medicine, pathology, pediatrics, and radiology - have visited the site. Visitors used the site to answer clinical questions, prepare for lectures, conferences, informal teaching sessions, and examinations, and as a self-directed learning tool for remaining up-to-date.

The website continues to be improved based on feedback obtained from site visitors via the comment form. Changes include:
Explicit documentation of ACGME competencies highlighted by the cases
Addition of patient information prescriptions from MEDLINEplus
Addition of Google news searches to highlight the social/community context of a disease/problem, etc.

Future plans include:
Formal documentation of ACGME competencies
Evaluation of use in other educational venues
Offering continuing medical education credit
Implementing a learning community - “group of people who share the same concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”