Background: Transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) has been shown to be a powerful tool that emergency physicians can use to guide resuscitation efforts during cardiac arrest. Currently, there is no standardized curriculum to teach TEE to emergency physicians.
Objective: We hypothesized that the use of a pilot training course combining interactive e-learning and hands-on simulation would increase the percentage of students achieving a score of ≥80% on a multiple-choice test of knowledge and increase self-reported comfort using TEE.
Methods: We designed a 2.5-h TEE course for emergency physicians and medical intensive care unit fellows. Participants took a test of knowledge and a survey of comfort-both online-before, just after, and 4 weeks after taking the course. Survey responses measured participants self-reported comfort with using TEE in clinical practice. A normal binomial approximation was used to calculate the 95% confidence interval.
Results: Of the 3 tests of knowledge, 15 participants completed all tests. Of the surveys of comfort, 31 participants completed the precourse survey, 32 completed the postcourse survey, and 19 completed the 4-week follow-up survey. The proportion of students scoring ≥80% improved from 40% on the precourse test to 80% on the postcourse test (95% confidence interval 1-79). The proportion of students indicating comfort with using TEE improved from 3% precourse to 53% postcourse (95% confidence interval 28-71).
Conclusions: A TEE training course resulted in a 50% increase in surveyed participants feeling comfortable using TEE in cardiac arrest and a 40% increase in participants scoring ≥80% on a test of knowledge.
Keywords: cardiac arrest; e-learning; medical education; transesophageal echocardiography.
Published by Elsevier Inc.