Background:
Point-of-care (POC) ultrasonography (US) is defined as portable ultrasonography brought to the patient that is performed and interpreted “real-time” by the provider. Recently, POCUS for the perioperative setting has demonstrated a high degree of utility for the acute assessment of: cardiovascular, airway, pulmonary, gastric, abdominal, and neurologic pathology. [1, 2] This rapid growth of this emerging bedside examination tool has lead to “ a call to action” for incorporation of perioperative POCUS education and training for current and future trainees. [3] In 2015, successful implementation of comprehensive perioperative POCUS curriculum, abbreviated FORESIGHT (Focused periOperative Risk Evaluation Sonography Involving Gastro-abdominal, Hemodynamic, and Trans-thoracic ultrasound) was demonstrated at a single academic center. [2] Since that time the developer of the curriculum has transitioned the learning modules to an online platform, www.foresightultrasound.com. This project highlights the implementation of this e-learning platform at another academic center (Loma Linda University Medical Center) with hopes of future implementation of this system across multiple academic programs.
Methods
A task-force was developed to transition the education lectures and evaluation tools used for the original FORESIGHT curriculum to an online platform. The mission statement for this initiative was to develop the material to be completely open access, be available under a Creative Commons license [4], and distribute all education materials for free. Once developed all previously validated model/simulation focused lectures and resident evaluation tools (Kirkpatrick Level 1 and 2) were performed utilizing the website. Evaluation of the website and its content was performed by weekly resident evaluations during the hands-on training sessions for each of the FORESIGHT curriculum topics using a 5 point Likert scale. In addition, website functionally benchmarks were also captured. Finally evaluation of the online testing system and resident performance database was also evaluated.
Results
The online site has been implemented for a period of 9 months for a total of 45 residents. All requested residents were able to perform satisfaction surveys (Kirkpatrick Level 1) and content assessment tests (Kirkpatrick Level 2) without difficulty. The site exhibited no events of downtime or data loss. Aggregate data of the resident evaluations of the website demonstrated: a score of 4.8/5 on effectiveness of the presentation, 5/5 on content relevance, and 4.8/5 quality of learning material.
Conclusion: This project demonstrates one effective avenue to provide perioperative POCUS education. It is the hope of the authors of this project that this site may serve as a resource to facilitate collaboration across many academic anesthesiology programs, with the ultimate mission of incorporating POCUS training as a core competency of anesthesiology training.
1. Ramsingh, D., V. Gudzenko, and R.D. Martin, Point-of-Care Ultrasound: Novel Technology to Routine Perioperative Assessment Tool. Anesth Analg, 2017. 124(3): p. 709-711.
2. Ramsingh, D., et al., Impact assessment of perioperative point-of-care ultrasound training on anesthesiology residents. Anesthesiology, 2015. 123(3): p. 670-82.
3. Mahmood, F., et al., Perioperative Ultrasound Training in Anesthesiology: A Call to Action. Anesth Analg, 2016. 122(6): p. 1794-804.
4. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/li...
