Revolutionizing Pediatric Care: A Scoping Review of Synchronous Virtual Care/Telehealth Approaches

Pediatric synchronous virtual care/telehealth comprises real-time, online-mediated health care for children and their families. Its use exponentially increased during and since the COVID-19 pandemic. This session will identify key learnings from a recent scoping review of the child health literature examining synchronous virtual care from the perspective of child and family experiences and outcomes. Attendees will advance their knowledge about design features and implementation considerations in offering virtual care to children/youth and their families. Additional areas to be addressed in this session are promising evaluation strategies for determining the impact of virtual care, such as the use of participatory research, mixed methods and family-centered methods. Importantly, the session will address social determinants of health factors in the context of seeking equity and inclusion in virtual care. We will summarize review results and emerging considerations for accessible synchronous virtual care approaches.

The session will address the following components of the scoping review:
(a) Scoping Review Objectives and

Methods: Objectives and methods used in this scoping review will be shared. This includes systematic screening and review of published literature that has examined synchronous virtual care approaches from the perspective of family outcomes and experience. We reviewed a decade (2013 to 2023, inclusive) of published literature addressing pediatric virtual care from key databases.
(b) Scoping Review

Results: Review results will be provided. Specifically, electronic database searches generated 1,079 articles, which underwent two rounds of screening, resulting in 117 relevant articles from which study results were elicited and amalgamated. Results of the review comprise key findings related to the experiences of virtual care among children/youth receiving pediatric care and their families, with consideration for optimal delivery of virtual care in pediatrics. These results inform salient elements of virtual care such as platforms, practice approaches and perceived impacts (e.g., benefits and challenges). These findings will be presented, with practical implications and recommendations.