IntroductionPoint-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is expanding across all medical specialties. As the benefits of US technology are becoming apparent, efforts to integrate US into pre-clinical medical education are growing. Our objective was to describe our process of integrating POCUS as an educational tool into the medical school curriculum and how such efforts are perceived by students.MethodsThis was a pilot study to introduce ultrasonography into the Harvard Medical School curriculum to first- and second-year medical students. Didactic and hands-on sessions were introduced to first-year students during gross anatomy and to second-year students in the physical exam course. Student-perceived attitudes, understanding, and knowledge of US, and its applications to learning the physical exam, were measured by a post-assessment survey.ResultsAll first-year anatomy students (n=176) participated in small group hands-on US sessions. In the second-year physical diagnosis course, 38 students participated in four sessions. All students (91%) agreed or strongly agreed that additional US teaching should be incorporated throughout the four-year medical school curriculum.ConclusionPOCUS can effectively be integrated into the existing medical school curriculum by using didactic and small group hands-on sessions. Medical students perceived US training as valuable in understanding human anatomy and in learning physical exam skills. This innovative program demonstrates US as an additional learning modality. Future goals include expanding on this work to incorporate US education into all four years of medical school.

Introduction: Euthanasia stands as the much debated, controversial and legally questionable end of life dilemma encountered by health care professionals globally. In India, currently active euthanasia has been debated for granting legal sanction. Yet, the health care professionals especially the medical graduates were not exposed to these ethical end of life dilemmas in their formative years. This scenario calls for an analysis into their understanding of this issue, how they want to handle such dilemmas and whether they had adequate exposure and training to handle such end of life dilemmas in their curriculum. Methodology: A questionnaire with three segments of 9, 5and 6 questions each was administered to 100 medical graduates who were enrolled voluntarily for this study. The collected data were analysed by descriptive statistics. Results: Only 53% showed awareness about euthanasia. Among them only 17% among were aware of physician assisted death. The third year graduates had finite idea about this concept among all years studied. The study found that the medical graduates wanted legalisation of euthanasia. Only 37% opined that if legalised they might administer if needed on their patients. Personal belief was cited as the primary reason for hesitancy to administer euthanasia. Less than 50% only were aware of right of the patient to decide to have euthanasia. Majority reported that the duration allotted for formal teaching of these were minimal and restricted to only second professional year. Conclusion: End of life ethical dilemmas do exist and this study pointed the clear gap in understanding, implementation of medical graduates about these concepts. The study stresses the need for exposing the medical graduates to these bioethical concepts in their curriculum in a more active way.