The evolution of an integrated ultrasound curriculum (iUSC) for medical students: 9-year experience (original) (raw)

An integrated ultrasound curriculum (iUSC) for medical students: 4-year experience

Critical Ultrasound Journal, 2011

A review of the development and implementation of a 4-year medical student integrated ultrasound curriculum is presented. Multiple teaching and assessment modalities are discussed as well as results from testing and student surveys. Lessons learned while establishing the curriculum are summarized. It is concluded that ultrasound is a well received, valuable teaching tool across all 4 years of medical school, and students learn ultrasound well, and they feel their ultrasound experience enhances their medical education.

Integration of Ultrasound in Undergraduate Medical Education at the California Medical Schools: A Discussion of Common Challenges and Strategies From the UMeCali Experience

Journal of ultrasound in medicine : official journal of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, 2016

Since the first medical student ultrasound electives became available more than a decade ago, ultrasound in undergraduate medical education has gained increasing popularity. More than a dozen medical schools have fully integrated ultrasound education in their curricula, with several dozen more institutions planning to follow suit. Starting in June 2012, a working group of emergency ultrasound faculty at the California medical schools began to meet to discuss barriers as well as innovative approaches to implementing ultrasound education in undergraduate medical education. It became clear that an ongoing collaborative could be formed to discuss barriers, exchange ideas, and lend support for this initiative. The group, termed Ultrasound in Medical Education, California (UMeCali), was formed with 2 main goals: to exchange ideas and resources in facilitating ultrasound education and to develop a white paper to discuss our experiences. Five common themes integral to successful ultrasound ...

Longitudinal Ultrasound Curriculum Incorporation at West Virginia University School of Medicine: A Description and Graduating Students' Perceptions

Journal of ultrasound in medicine : official journal of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, 2018

Sonography is a clinical tool being incorporated in multiple medical specialties with evidence of improved patient care and cost. Some schools have begun implementing ultrasound curricula. We hope to build upon that foundation and provide another potential framework of incorporation. There are several barriers, including curricular space, equipment and physical space, adequate faculty, and performing assessment. At West Virginia University, we began a longitudinal ultrasound curriculum in 2012 with incorporation of didactic and practical sessions into gross anatomy, our systems-based second-year curriculum, physical diagnosis course, and clinical rotations. We included both written and practical assessment from the onset. After the initial 4 years, the first graduates were surveyed on their perceptions of the curriculum. Responses were correlated with specialty choice and clinical campus site. Based on our survey (90% response rate), students felt sonography was useful for anatomica...

Integrating ultrasound into modern medical curricula

Clinical Anatomy, 2017

Introduction: Ultrasonography is widely practiced in many disciplines. It is becoming increasingly important to design well-structured curricula to introduce imaging to students during medical school. This review aims to analyze the literature for evidence of how ultrasonography has been incorporated into anatomy education in medical school curricula worldwide. Materials and methods: A literature search was conducted using multiple databases with the keywords: "Ultrasound OR Ultrasonographic examination*" AND "Medical student* OR Undergraduate teaching* OR Medical education*" AND "Anatomy* OR Living anatomy* OR Real-time anatomy*". Results: This review found that ultrasound curricula vary in stage of implementation, course length, number of sessions offered to students as well as staffing and additional course components. Most courses consisted of didactic lectures supplemented with demonstration sessions and/or hands-on ultrasound scanning sessions. The stage of course implementation tended to depend on the aim of the course; introductory courses were offered earlier in a student's career. Most courses improved student confidence and exam performance, and more junior students tended to benefit more from learning anatomy with ultrasound guidance rather than learning clinical examination skills. Students tended to prefer smaller groups when learning ultrasound to get more access to using the machines themselves. Conclusions: Ultrasonography is an important skill, which should be taught to medical students early in their careers as it facilitates anatomical education and is clinically relevant, though This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 2 further objective research required to support the use of ultrasound education as a tool to improve clinical examination skills in medical students.

A Scoping Review of Ultrasound Teaching in Undergraduate Medical Education

Medical science educator, 2017

Introduction Increasingly, medical schools are integrating Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) into their curricula. This review investigated the available literature on how best to integrate POCUS in the teaching of medical students and the benefits of doing so. Methods Given the heterogeneous literature that has emerged on POCUS education, a scoping review was conducted. Relevant medical databases, including PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, EMBASE and CINAHL, were searched between January 1980 and August 2016, using keywords identified by the authors. Inclusion criteria were as follows: prospective or retrospective studies, observational or intervention studies, and studies describing how medical students learn to use ultrasound. Results The literature search yielded 593 articles, of which 128 met the inclusion criteria. Studies that met the inclusion criteria were sub-categorised under the following headings: those that described or evaluated an ultrasound curriculum, those that employed ultrasound as a means of teaching another topic in the curriculum (i.e., anatomy, physical examination, physiology, invasive procedures), those that investigated the learning curve of ultrasound education and those that employed adjuncts or peer mentoring to teach ultrasound. Conclusions The reviewed literature indicates that the integration of ultrasound in undergraduate medical education is both feasible and beneficial to medical students. This article is intended to inform medical educators aiming to integrate ultrasound into their medical school curricula.

National Ultrasound Curriculum for Medical Students

Ultrasound Quarterly, 2014

Ultrasound (US) is an extremely useful diagnostic imaging modality because of its real-time capability, noninvasiveness, portability, and relatively low cost. It carries none of the potential risks of ionizing radiation exposure or intravenous contrast administration. For these reasons, numerous medical specialties now rely on US not only for diagnosis and guidance for procedures, but also as an extension of the physical examination. In addition, many medical school educators recognize the usefulness of this technique as an aid to teaching anatomy, physiology, pathology, and physical diagnosis. Radiologists are especially interested in teaching medical students the appropriate use of US in clinical practice. Educators who recognize the power of this tool have sought to incorporate it into the medical school curriculum. The basic question that educators should ask themselves is: ''What should a student graduating from medical school know about US?'' To aid them in answering this question, US specialists from the Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound and the Alliance of Medical School Educators in Radiology have collaborated in the design of a US curriculum for medical students. The implementation of such a curriculum will vary from institution to institution, depending on the resources of the medical school and space in the overall curriculum. Two different examples of how US can be incorporated vertically or horizontally into a curriculum are described, along with an explanation as to how this curriculum satisfies the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education competencies, modified for the education of our future physicians.

Medical Student Ultrasound Education, a WFUMB Position Paper, Part II. A consensus statement of ultrasound societies

Medical Ultrasonography

Ultrasound is becoming a fundamental first-line diagnostic tool for most medical specialties and an innovative tool to teach anatomy, physiology and pathophysiology to undergraduate and graduate students. However, availability of structured training programs during medical school is lagging behind and many physicians still acquire all their ultrasound skills during postgraduate training.There is wide variation in medical student ultrasound education worldwide. Sharing successful educational strategies from early adopter medical schools and learning from leading education programs should advance the integration of ultrasound into the university medical school curricula. In this overview, we present current approaches and suggestions by ultrasound societies concerning medical student educa-tion throughout the world. Based on these examples, we formulate a consensus statement with suggestions on how to integrate ultrasound teaching into the preclinical and clinical medical curricula.

Benefits of a dedicated ultrasound education for medical students: A 3 year experience

MedEdPublish, 2019

Objective An accelerated ultrasound education curriculum was designed specifically for second-year medical students. Our goal was to effectively measure this teaching methodology and to assess the practicality of this concept. Materials and Methods After analyzing the existing ultrasound training for medical students, improvements were made to the existing curriculum for 2nd-year students that addressed the drawbacks in ultrasound education, including instrumentation, anatomy, and ultrasound-guided procedures. Prior to exposure to ultrasound education, all students participated in an anonymous quiz to determine and document their baseline knowledge. The ultrasound immersion week included; hands-on education and lectures. Students were divided into small groups with radiologists supervising ultrasound skills on standardized patients and intervention using phantom models. After the week-long exposure to radiology and ultrasound, students took a post-exposure assessment to evaluate their knowledge. Efficacy of the program was determined by comparing pre and post-exposure test results. Results Students from Cohort A and B had a 19% improvement, and Cohort C had a 39% improvement. Pre and Post immersion quiz analysis were validated with statistical testing with a p-value <0.01. A thorough analysis of all three years showed significant improvement among medical students. Conclusion The study proved that short, accelerated ultrasound education programs are effective in educating second-year medical students. By the standardized questionnaire, it also demonstrated that there is a significant impact in ultrasound knowledge among students through a week of focused education. Using homemade phantoms promoted

The ultrasound challenge: A novel approach to medical student ultrasound education

Journal of ultrasound in medicine: official journal of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine

A Novel Approach to Medical Student Ultrasound Education he development of focused bedside ultrasound has provided a means for nontraditional imaging specialists to answer clinical questions. Focused ultrasound is considered the standard of care in many areas of medicine, including central venous cannulation 1 and trauma resuscitation. 2 Furthermore, ultrasound is becoming more popular in critical care fields to evaluate for global cardiac function, volume responsiveness, and abdominal aortic aneurysm screening and to answer a number of other clinical questions. The importance of ultrasound education in medical school training cannot be overstated. Many programs have developed methods to integrate ultrasound into medical education. 4-6 Medical school graduates are increasingly expected to demonstrate proficiency using ultrasound during residency. As a result, many believe that medical schools have a duty to provide an adequate level of ultrasound education to their students.

Ultrasound Integration in Undergraduate Medical Education: Comparison of Ultrasound Proficiency Between Trained and Untrained Medical Students

Journal of ultrasound in medicine : official journal of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, 2015

The benefit of formal ultrasound implementation in undergraduate medical education remains unclear. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of ultrasound curriculum implementation during year 1 medical student physical examination teaching on the ultrasound proficiency of medical students. An ultrasound curriculum was formally implemented at our institution in August 2012 and since then has successfully trained 2 classes of medical students (year 1 and year 2). Year 3 and year 4 medical students did not receive any formal ultrasound training, as the curriculum had not yet been implemented during their preclinical years. With the use of a 22-point ultrasound objective structured clinical examination (US-OSCE), trained medical students were compared to untrained medical students. The US-OSCE tested image acquisition and interpretation of the following systems: ocular, neck, vascular, pulmonary, cardiovascular, and abdominal. Emergency medicine (EM) residents formally ...