Introduction. Ultrasound is a diagnostic technique useful in internal medicine and geriatrics to make an early and correct diagnosis in many patients with many complex diseases. It is often difficult to teach the ultrasound and the objective of the paper is to illustrate a teaching method to teach the ultrasound using the teaching and learning methods based on clinical problems. Materials and methods. In the Geriatrics Department it was made a theoretical and practical course of ultrasound for 10 doctors to teach ultrasound using numerous clinical cases. The course lasted 20 days, 6 hours a day. Two hours every day have been used for a lecture and four hours each day have been used to illustrate 8 real clinical cases every day. The patients were studied clinically and then were examined with ultrasound from all 10 doctors. The main clinical cases were: heart failure, liver diseases, obstructive jaundice, abdominal colic, renal colic, hematuria, upper abdominal mass, lower abdominal mass, ascites, dyspnea, severe anemia, superficial lymph nodes palpable, increase abdomen volume, increase in volume of the neck, fever of unknown cause, blood vomiting, severe constipation, severe diarrhea, abnormal heart rhythms, acute retention of urine, breast palpable mass, abdominal trauma, increase in scrotal volume. Learners also performed two ultrasounds every day in two patients who had not been given any clinical outcome. Results. Each clinical case of a real patient with symptoms and laboratory tests, radiological examinations and therapy was evaluated by doctors along with teachers and then all patients were examined with full ultrasound abdomen, chest and neck. Learners have properly identified with ultrasonography, 80% of diseases in all patients using clinical examination together information, data of laboratory tests and other diagnostic tests and also the ultrasound examination lasted the time adequate. Learners performed correctly and complete the ultrasound examination if they knew all the clinical data of patients and ultrasound report was complete. In patients who were not given any clinical information, learners have performed an ultrasound examination not complete, have identified only 40% of diseases and ultrasound report was unsatisfactory. The duration of the ultrasound was 50% higher. Conclusions. Our study has shown that if you establish the teaching objectives of the ultrasound program and using real clinical cases with patients who have many diseases, learners can perform very accurate and complete ultrasound and can quickly identify almost all diseases if they know some clinical data and if preliminarily performing the physical examination. In conclusion, the ultrasound examination diagnostic accuracy is high if you use interactive teaching methods with proper definition of the educational objectives in ultrasound and with proper choice of real patients with several diseases that can be identified by the ultrasound examination
Use of ultrasound in Graduate Medical and Continuing Education , Patient Safety
