Advanced Ultrasound Training for Fourth-Year Medical Students

Abstract

Ultrasound training and education in medical schools is rare, and the foci of current ultrasound curricula are limited. There is a significant need for advanced ultrasound training models in medical school curricula to reduce educational burdens for physician residency programs and improve overall physician competency.The authors describe and evaluate the advanced ultrasound training program developed at The Ohio State University College of Medicine (OSU COM). The OSU COM program is a longitudinal advanced ultrasound curriculum for fourth-year medical students pursuing specialties that require frequent use of focused ultrasound. One hundred fifty student participants have completed the yearlong program to date. Participants engage in didactic lectures, journal club sessions, hands-on training, teaching and patient-modeling activities, and complete a final project. Experienced Ohio State University Medical Center faculty are recruited from specialties that frequently use ultrasound (e.g., emergency medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics-gynecology). A multimodal instructional assessment approach ensures that ultrasound training yields experience with cognitive, behavioral, and constructive learning components. The authors discuss the benefits of the program as well as its challenges and future directions.The advanced ultrasound training program at OSU COM demonstrates a novel approach to providing ultrasound training for medical students, offering a feasible model for meeting training guidelines without increasing the educational requirements for residency programs.

Pilot Point-of-Care Ultrasound Curriculum at Harvard Medical School: Early Experience

“…Several studies have shown bedside ultrasonography to be a feasible addition to medical school education with a handful of schools reporting successful integration of a vertical curriculum over four years 4,11…”

“…Such efforts have been well received by students who report a high level of satisfaction with ultrasonography as well as interest in additional training and incorporation of bedside US during medical school education. Efforts have also shown that POCUS introduced during anatomy and the physical exam course show promise to increase students’ knowledge 4–16…”

A Scoping Review of Ultrasound Teaching in Undergraduate Medical Education

“…Although medical students can reach national sonographer standards with a structured integrated approach [5], the majority of student scores tended to be akin to 'a borderline level of competency'. This underscores the need for a structured approach to undergraduate ultrasound education which incorporates a robust image review and management system [15]. Many programs up to this point have been evaluated using various pre-and post-test questionnaires, MCQ exams and checklists; however, validated tools are emerging [21,22].…”

“…Some [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] Fifteen papers describe variously integrated ultrasound curricula. Five studies are notable for the numbers of medical students involved in a formal evaluative process (>150) [5][6][7][8][9].…”

An economical strategy for early medical education in ultrasound

“…Because of these new competencies and an increased use and availability of ultrasound technology in many medical disciplines, there is a great need to train a new generation of physicians that are capable and confident with ultrasound. A few medical schools have now integrated ultrasound into all four years of their medical training [13], enabling their students to be leaders and teachers of ultrasound in both their clerkships and residencies [14–16]. These institutions have reported that many kinds of formal ultrasound training significantly increase competency in ultrasound fundamentals for both medical students [13–15] and residents [17].…”