Ultrasonography in preclinical education: a pilot study.

Context: Ultrasonography is a valuable diagnostic tool in the clinical setting. Yet, medical students often have minimal familiarity with this technology.

Objective: To evaluate the ability of second-year medical students to use ultrasonography for identification of anatomic structures and pathologic conditions.

Design: A self-directed approach that reduced facilitator involvement, encouraging learning that mimicked the medical school's problem-based learning pathway program.

Methods: Five students were each given 10 hours of instruction in ultrasonographic techniques by three certified ultrasonographers in outpatient and hospital settings. Each student performed 40 hours of organ-specific ultrasonographic scans on another student in 2-hour sessions during 20 weeks. Images were archived for future evaluation and quality rating. Students took a 35-question posttraining examination with 10 contrived case scenarios. Questions were designed to test student knowledge in three categories: anatomic structure, technical skill, and clinical diagnosis.

Results: Posttraining examination results, expressed as the percent of correct answers for all five participants by category, were as follows: anatomic structure, 70%; technical skill, 70%; clinical diagnosis, 68%. Evaluations of the archived images, which were graded for proper anatomic identification and image clarity, yielded the following scores indicating "good" or "fair" quality for each anatomic region: abdominal, 80%; pelvic, 63%; cardiac, 73%.

Conclusion: Second-year osteopathic medical students can attain a sufficient degree of proficiency in limited ultrasonographic technique.