Introduction:
Each summer since 2013, students from the University of California Irvine School of Medicine (UCISOM) have taught a series of basic ultrasound courses to healthcare students and professionals at Tandabui Institute of Science and Technology (TIHEST). The initial course “Introduction to Ultrasound”, modeled by Dr. John C. Fox, M.D., was composed of lectures and hands on training for 113 students. In July 2014, UCI students administered a similar introductory course to 33 students and a supplementary course focused on ultrasound diagnosis of common pathology to 61 returning students. The introductory curriculum was expanded to include ultrasound pathology, and in the summer of 2015 UCI students administered an “Introduction to Clinical Ultrasound and Pathology” course to 68 students.
Due to a growing appreciation of bedside ultrasound as an important clinical tool and pass rates of above 90% in the courses administered 2013-2015, UCISOM was invited to return in June 2016. Our team of eleven first-year UCI medical students has adapted the “Introduction to Clinical Ultrasound and Pathology” curriculum to account for feedback from prior years and will be administering this course over 3.5 weeks in June 2016. Topics include knobology, Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma (FAST), pulmonary, abdominal, cardiac, pelvic, and obstetric examinations. The course consists of five one-hour long introductory lectures, one 1.5 hour long lecture discussing common pathology using clinical vignettes, and three 2-hour sessions per week of hands-on practice in small groups of 8-12 students. Practical instruction will be done using SonoSite NanoMaxx portable ultrasound machines provided by UCISOM. Our team anticipates enrollment of 60-80 students and a pass rate comparable to prior years.
Methods:
A pretest survey will first be administered to the students. This survey will ask students for information such as personal background, academic and professional status, and amount of prior experience with ultrasound, and will be accompanied by an ungraded multiple-choice assessment that measures baseline knowledge in the topics covered in the course. On Friday of each week, a multiple-choice quiz will be administered that evaluates student knowledge of the topics covered earlier in the week.
At the conclusion of the course, the team plans to give the students a comprehensive final examination containing multiple-choice and practical assessment portions, as well as a survey that records students’ subjective comfort levels on a 5-point Likert scale in the various topics, opinions on the usefulness of the provided class resources, helpfulness of the pathology unit, and any feedback for future improvement in the course. Minor score adjustments (“curving”) will be made to offset any questions a majority of students answered incorrectly.
Additionally, efficacy of the course model will be quantitatively evaluated by measuring the change in mean score between the pre-course knowledge assessment (“pre-test”) and the written portion of the final exam (“post-test”), which will contain identical content, difficulty, and question type, as well as the overall course passing rate (with cumulative scores above 65% defined as passing). An ANOVA will then be performed to analyze the effect of any prior ultrasound experience on class performance.
Note on Results and Discussion:
This project is on-going. This course will start on the 6th of June, after the abstract submission deadline. However, the course, the measurements of its efficacy and poster depicting the results will be completed before the conference date.
