Theme-based teaching of point-of-care ultrasound in undergraduate medical education

A handful of medical schools have developed formal curricula to teach medical students point-of-care ultrasound; however, no ideal method has been proposed. The purpose of this study was to assess an innovative theme-based ultrasound educational model for undergraduate medical education. This was a single-center cross-sectional study conducted at an academic medical center. The study participants were 95 medical students with minimal or no ultrasound experience during their third year of training. The educational theme for the ultrasound session was “The evaluation of patients involved in motor vehicle collisions.” This educational theme was carried out during all components of the 1-day event called SonoCamp: asynchronous learning, the didactic lecture, the skills stations, the team case challenge and the individual challenge stations. Assessment consisted of a questionnaire, team case challenge, and individual challenges. A total of 89 of 95 (94 %) students who participated in SonoCamp responded, and 92 % (87 of 95) completed the entire questionnaire before and after the completion of SonoCamp. Ninety-nine percent (95 % CI, 97–100 %) agreed that training at skill stations helped solidify understanding of point-of-care ultrasound. Ninety-two percent (95 % CI, 86–98 %) agreed that theme-based learning is an engaging learning style for point-of-care ultrasound. All students agreed that having a team exercise is an engaging way to learn point-of-care ultrasound; and of the 16 groups, the average score on the case-based questions was 82 % (SD + 28). The 1-day, theme-based ultrasound educational event was an engaging learning technique at our institution which lacks undergraduate medical education ultrasound curriculum.