Teaching medical students diagnostic sonography.

Objective: The purpose of this pilot project was to train medical students in sonography.

Methods: Thirty-three medical students participated in a pilot sonography course, which included exposure to ultrasound physics, knobology of a compact ultrasound scanner, training in scanning and anatomy of the aorta and right kidney, and reading assignments in these areas. Pretraining and posttraining examinations were given in these areas to analyze the degree of knowledge gained by these methods.

Results: Nearly all of the medical students increased their basic knowledge of sonography and improved their scanning skills. The improvement was statistically significant in all areas.

Conclusions: Training in sonography for medical students could be used as a foundation for later, more specialty-specific training to improve the overall medical sonography skills for all physicians.