Testing Pediatric Rheumatology Diagnostic Decision Support in Clinical Use

Boston Children's Hospital resources include SimulConsult which is a decision support tool available for use of BCH provider through the library portal. It is offered along other resources on that webpage (UpToDate, Micromedex, and VisualDx). See addendum 1.

Recently, a pediatric rheumatology arm was added to the expertise of SimulConsult, guided by our co-PI, Dr. Robert Sundel. As this tool is being offered and used, the investigators would like to assess metric of performance of this tool in enhancing participant trainees knowledge about the work up of patients with a potential rheumatologic disorder. See also www.ncbi.nlm.gov/pubmed/27964737 The investigators are conducting a clinical research to assess improvement in the clinical performance of study participants evaluating patients with a potential rheumatologic disorder. The intervention involved in using a computerized decision support tool already available in the Boston Children's Hospital domain. The outcome will be comparing this performance to that of an attending physician as the gold standard. We will assess the study participants performance across two locations: Emergency Department and Rheumatology clinic. Care to patients remains unchanged, as the workup plan and care is provided by an attending across both domains.

The investigators main hypothesis is that using a decision support tool will result in a higher agreement rate between study participants' differential diagnosis and work up plan compared with the gold standard (attending differential diagnosis and research plan).

Boston Children's Hospital resources include SimulConsult which is a decision support tool available for use of BCH provider through the library portal. It is offered along other resources on that webpage (UpToDate, Micromedex, and VisualDx). See addendum 1.

Recently, a pediatric rheumatology arm was added to the expertise of SimulConsult, guided by our co-PI, Dr. Robert Sundel. As this tool is being offered and used, the investigators would like to assess metric of performance of this tool in enhancing study participants (trainees) knowledge about the work up of patients with a potential rheumatologic disorder. See also www.ncbi.nlm.gov/pubmed/27964737 The investigators are conducting a clinical research to assess improvement in the clinical performance of trainees evaluating patients with a potential rheumatologic disorder. The intervention involved in using a computerized decision support tool already available in the Boston Children's Hospital domain. The outcome will be comparing this performance to that of an attending physician as the gold standard. The investigators will assess the study participants performance across two locations: Emergency Department and Rheumatology clinic. Care to patients remains unchanged, as the workup plan and care is provided by an attending across both domains.

Our main hypothesis is that using a decision support tool will result in a higher agreement rate between study participants' differential diagnosis and work up plan compared with the gold standard (attending differential diagnosis and research plan).

Eligibility Criteria:
Inclusion Criteria:

A trainee at Boston Children's residency program (pediatrics, emergency medicine, pediatric emergency medicine, pediatric rheumatology)

Exclusion Criteria:

Opting out of the study (optional at any stage)