Improving the effectiveness of a paediatric handbook for new house officers

Abstract

Background and objectives: To help house officers adjust quickly to their new responsibilities, a departmental handbook is provided. As this had not been updated recently and was underutilised, a quality improvement project was undertaken to improve this resource. Methods: The handbook was updated and new material added based on feedback from house officers and senior medical staff. Subsequently, house officers were surveyed on their utilization rate of the new handbook and its usefulness in various clinical scenarios. An open-book clinical quiz was administered to gauge their clinical competency. Results: There was a 26.8% increase in the proportion of house officers who used the handbook more than once every 2–3 days compared to pre-intervention. There was a significant improvement in quiz scores from 26.7/40 to 31.1/40 between the pre-intervention ( n =19) and post-intervention ( n =37) groups ( p <0.001), as well as perceived usefulness of the handbook in various clinical scenarios as measured on a 10-point Likert scale. Conclusions: We find that improvement in the quality of a handbook for paediatric house officers is associated with increase in its utilization and benefits to their clinical competency and confidence level, especially on call. To increase the utilization rate of the handbook, both the user interface and content need to be improved.