The introduction of ultrasound into medical student education is well underway in many locations around the world, but is still in its infancy or has yet to begin in others. Proper incorporation of ultrasound education into medical training requires planning and resources, both capital and human. In this article, we discuss the state of the art of ultrasound in medical education throughout the world, as well as various methodologies utilized to improve student education and to incorporate ultrasound into every facet of training. Experiences from various educational systems and available evidence regarding the impact of ultrasound education are summarized. Representing multiple societies and specialties throughout the world, we discuss established modern as well as novel education structures and different successful approaches.

A diverse range of health professionals use psychomotor skills as part of their professional practice roles. Most health disciplines use large or complex psychomotor skills. These skills are first taught by the educator then acquired, performed, and lastly learned. Psychomotor skills may be taught using a variety of widely-accepted and published teaching models. The number of teaching steps used in these models varies from two to seven. However, the utility of these models to teach skill acquisition and skill retention are disputable when teaching complex skills, in contrast to simple skills. Contemporary motor learning and cognition literature frames instructional practices which may assist the teaching and learning of complex task-based skills. This paper reports 11 steps to be considered when teaching psychomotor skills.

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The telephone has long been used as a medium of communication. In more recent years the telephone has become a legitimate tool in marketing and survey research (Barriball et al. 1996). Telephone interviewing is becoming an increasingly popular form of interview for qualitative research (Carr & Worth 2001). Whilst there have been discussions in the literature on logistical advantages and disadvantages of telephone interviewing, there has been little debate as to whether this form of interview is compatible with qualitative health research. Much of the literature reporting this interview method is based on quantitative or structured questionnaire style research under the guise of 'qualitative' research. So the question remains: Is the telephone interview compatible with interpretive phenomenological research? This paper describes how telephone interviewing was used in a recently conducted interpretive phenomenological study, and argues that this is a methodologically and economically valuable data collection technique in qualitative research. Qualitative researchers should not rely exclusively on the face-to-face interview, as the telephone interview can be an equally valuable data collection approach.