Teaching of clinical ultrasonography to undergraduates: students as mentors

Abstract

Background: Ultrasonography is a highly useful diagnostic technique that supplements traditional physical examinations.

Objective: To demonstrate that students previously trained in clinical ultrasonography are capable of instructing other students in a similar manner in a short period of time ("peer mentoring").

Methodology: Five medical students in their 5th year, trained in abdominal and cardiac ultrasonography by physicians with experience, instructed 24 other students in the same procedure. The training consisted of an online theoretical course and practical training lasting about 12hours, in which each student had to perform 6 basic abdominal planes and 4 basic cardiac planes on 20 healthy volunteers. Subsequently, the students underwent an objective assessment test on healthy models performed by expert physicians in clinical ultrasonography.

Results: The students managed to correctly identify 90.2% of the basic abdominal planes, except for the left coronal (spleen and left kidney) and subcostal (gallbladder) planes, with slightly lower success rates of 82.5% and 80%, respectively. Due to the greater difficulty of obtaining cardiac planes, the success rate was lower: 70.3%, in the subxiphoid, short parasternal and four chamber planes. The cardiac plane with the fewest errors in identification was the parasternal long plane (90% success). We observed no statistically significant differences between the results (teaching capacity) of the various mentors.

Conclusion: Medical students are capable of instructing other colleagues (peer mentoring) on the basic aspects of abdominal and cardiac ultrasonography after a relatively short training period.

Keywords: Ecografía clínica (ecografía a pie de cama); Educación médica; Medical education; Mentoría paritaria; Peer mentoring; Point-of-care ultrasonography (bedside ultrasonography).