Completed Tasks

Educational Webcasts

There were six CHAMP webcasts this grant year: October 8, 2014 – "Corporal Punishment Attitudes and Practices: What is the Rule of Thumb?" by Doctors Ann Lenane, Alicia Pekarsky, Linda Cahill, Jamie Hoffman-Rosenfeld, and Ann Botash; November 19, 2014 – "Mimics of Child Abuse" by Doctors Ann Lenane, Alicia Pekarsky, Linda Cahill, Jamie Hoffman-Rosenfeld, Lori Legano, and Ann Botash; January 7, 2015 – "Cry Me A River: Compassion Fatigue and the Child Abuse Professional" by Doctors Ann Lenane, Jamie Hoffman-Rosenfeld, Vincent Palusci, and Ann Botash; February 11, 2015 – "Common Pitfalls in the Recognition and Diagnosis of Child Abuse: Missing the Tip of the Iceberg" by Ann Botash, MD; March 11, 2015 – "Radiographic Imaging in the Evaluation of Child Abuse: Refining Practice Patterns" by Alicia Pekarsky, MD; April 30, 2015 – "FAQs about Sexually Transmitted Infections in Child Abuse Cases" by Doctors Ann Lenane, Jamie Hoffman-Rosenfeld, and Ann Botash.

Drs. Botash, Cahill, Hoffman-Rosenfeld, Legano, Lenane, Palusci, and Pekarsky are American Board of Pediatrics certified child abuse pediatricians and CHAMP Mentors. All webcasts bring research-based information to the child abuse professionals of NYS and provide an opportunity for attendees to get answers from an expert.

Webcast attendees identified themselves as being physicians and nurse practitioners working in pediatrics, emergency medicine and family medicine; SANE/SART/SAFEs; and non-medical members of multidisciplinary teams. There was a total of 869 registrants for the webcasts, 323 more than last year. Of those who registered, 545 applied for Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit, 208 more than last year. Both the webcasts and CME credits (one credit per webcast) are free to participants.

Attendees evaluated all webcast presenters as excellent and the content as being clear and helpful. From the responses to the surveys at the end of the webcasts, attendees planned to make significant changes in their practice, including:

• I will place more focus on providing anticipatory guidance.
• Be more sensitive to teens and their choices.
• Take notice of sentinel signs when evaluating a child with unexplained symptoms/ injuries.
• Request an evaluation of the scene before forming a conclusion.
• Improve decision tree for ordering skeletal survey. Explain, using the statistics, why the skeletal survey is a powerful tool in diagnosing abuse.
• Provide parents and learners (students and residents) with evidence-based reasoning behind testing when ordered.
• Complete a head to toe evaluation before assuming genital "only" injury.
• Listen carefully to the child and parent history – investigate/test the situations to see if they are plausible.

The Evaluating Child Sexual Abuse Course

The online course Evaluating Child Sexual Abuse continues to be an effective educational tool for pediatricians, emergency department physicians, physician’s assistants, nurse practitioners, and SANEs. This grant year 269 professionals registered for the course, 99 more than last year. By June 30, 155 had passed the 100-question test, 68 more than last year. Of those who passed the test, 71 applied for CME credit and 53 applied for American Board of Pediatrics Maintenance of Certification (MOC) credit. Although the course is free, there is small charge for the 12 CME credits and 20 MOC points.

The ECSA course was originally created to be the first step for NY medical professionals to become CHAMP Members. Its use has expanded to being part of child abuse training for medical residents and self-preparation for certification examinations. This year the Westchester (NY) FACT program used the course as part of its Emergency Department physician training. Twenty-two physicians completed the course and passed the test. In addition, the SUNY Canton nursing program uses the course as part of their program.

Between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015, 269 people registered for the course. Of those, 155 had passed the test, with 71 applying for CME credit. From the launch of the course in September 2011 through June 2015, there have been 755 registrants. Of those, 403 have passed the test and 240 have applied for CME credit.

Other CHAMP Website Resources

This grant year the CHAMPprogram.com website drew nearly 194,000 visitors. That is about 20,000 more visitors than last year. In addition to viewing web pages, visitors downloaded a significant number of resources. Tracking the number of downloads from the top 150 resources or items offered on the website, there were over 35,000 downloads, about 12,000 more than last year. That total includes over 3,500 Practice Recommendations relating to Triage, Testing and Treatment, Skeletal Survey, and Photographic Documentation.

In addition, the 24 questions and answers of Test Your Knowledge were visited over 58,000 times.

Statistics for the ChildAbuseMD.com website that posts the searchable webbook Child Abuse Evaluation & Treatment for Medical Providers are complicated by the fact that visitors from foreign countries repeatedly attempted to hack the site. As a result, for the first three quarters we only counted visitors identified as being from the US. The total was over 180,000 visitors. By the fourth quarter, there no longer appeared to be attacks on the website. As a result, we counted all visitors, a total of about 100,000.

Since ChildAbuseMD.com was launched in mid-2005 and CHAMPprogram.com was launched in mid-2007, there have been over three and a half million visitors to the websites.

CHAMP Network Members

This grant year one medical professional became a new Member by successfully passing the Evaluating Child Sexual Abuse course and a completing an observership at the CARE Program CHAMP Center of Excellence in Syracuse. Kristin Razawich, NP, Onondaga County, was added to the roster of Active Members.

To remain on the Active Member roster, Members must attend at least three CHAMP educational webcasts. Of the 30 Active Members that started this grant year, 23 maintained Active status by attending CHAMP webcasts. Seven became Inactive by moving out of state or failing to meet the education requirement. One new medical professionals became an Active Member and two Inactive members completed education requirements to become Active. As a result, there were 26 Active Members as of June 30, 2015.

In addition, Linda Cahill, MD, at the J.E. and Z.B. Butler Child Advocacy Center of the Children's Hospital at Montefiore had residents complete the CHAMP Residency Training Program. Residents who complete this program can become CHAMP Members when they are licensed to practice in NYS by submitting three of their recent child sexual abuse cases for review by a CHAMP expert.

Recommendation

The number of licensed pediatric medical professionals who qualify to become CHAMP Network Members and then remain Active Members is decreasing. Yet, the number of individuals attending webcasts, visiting the websites, and taking CHAMP coursework continues to increase. This demonstrates that CHAMP is an effective provider of web-based education. Because traditional medical education lacks well-focused training related to child sexual abuse, CHAMP could improve medical education by creating curricula for medical students and residents that can be accessed through its websites.