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About the program
This initiative focused on improving how general pediatricians manage pediatric constipation, one of the most common but inconsistently treated conditions in primary care.
Although general pediatricians regularly encounter constipation in practice, variation in guideline awareness and lack of practical, specific recommendations often result in inconsistent treatment and sporadic, infrequent education. Qstream’s microlearning technology helped their program by closing the gap between published clinical guidance and real-world practice through a scalable, engaging learning experience.
This program was rolled out to practicing general pediatricians across multiple health systems and private practices.
Inconsistent training, inconsistent care
Despite the availability of clinical guidelines, awareness and adoption among general pediatricians remained limited. Providers understood the basics of constipation management, but many lacked exposure to nuanced, practical guidance.
Traditional medical education contributed to this challenge. Pediatric constipation is minimally covered in medical school, inconsistently reinforced during residency and rarely addressed through formal advanced medical education. Most learning occurred informally through experience, leading to wide variation in practice and a lack of shared expertise.
Existing guidelines were perceived as vague, offering broad recommendations, with insufficient detail on dosing, sequencing therapies, behavioral interventions or what to do when first-line treatments failed.
“Seeing information on slides or in lectures is often too vague. You’re told to consider different options, but you’re not given the specific guidance clinicians actually need to apply it in practice.” — Danny Mallon, MD, Pediatric Gastroenterologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
As a result, providers often lacked confidence in managing more advanced cases and were quicker to refer patients rather than escalate care independently.
Designing a learning strategy built for real-world practice
| Developing the program through a rigorous academic approach, learning activities were tested with both novice and expert audiences to ensure appropriate difficulty and relevance for practicing pediatricians. | Incorporating gamification drove practice-level competition, with clinics competing against one another. Engagement and mastery scores drove ranking, awarding top teams prizes. | Monitoring analytics to inform ongoing program optimization and demonstrate learning trends across the participant population. Initial performance, mastery over time and overall engagement were measured. |
Embedding learning into everyday clinical practice
To address these gaps, the team implemented Qstream to deliver a structured microlearning strategy focused on specialized, guideline-based constipation management. The content emphasized specificity, including medication selection, dosing strategies, behavioral recommendations and decision-making for second-line therapies.
By delivering short, interactive activities spaced in daily workflows over time, it allowed pediatricians to engage with the content in small, manageable segments without taking time away from patient care.
Learners engaged with the content naturally throughout their day, whether walking into work or between patient visits, making it easier to participate and helping sustain engagement over time.
The results
Microlearning led to significant improvements in engagement, learning experience and reported practice change.
- 18x more likely to rate Qstream as a better learning experience
- 3x more likely to incorporate teachings into practice
- Increased confidence managing second-line and complex cases
- Reported that reinforced activities were validating rather than repetitive
“We received feedback from participants saying they actively looked forward to new questions. That’s not something you typically hear about continuing medical education.” — Danny Mallon, MD, Pediatric Gastroenterologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
Expanding use across clinical teams
Qstream’s microlearning platform reached hundreds of providers simultaneously while maintaining high-quality engagement over several months and successfully translated abstract clinical guidance into practical, actionable decision-making.
Additionally, Dr. Danny Mallon and his team have continued expanding microlearning into new clinical areas and training populations, including fellows and trainees. More recently, AI-assisted content creation has been introduced to generate high-quality clinical microlearning experiences.
The program’s success has led to organic growth, with multiple clinical leaders adopting Qstream for their own learning initiatives.
“I would describe Qstream as a really useful tool for delivering new knowledge that you want people to retain for a long period of time. The activation energy to engage is much lower than sitting through an hour lecture, and the knowledge is more advanced and more nuanced.”
— Danny Mallon, MD, Pediatric Gastroenterologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
Check out Dr. Danny Mallon’s video testimonial here