Introducing echocardiography to medical students: A novel echocardiography E‐Learning experience

Abstract

Echocardiography is fundamental to the understanding and practice of cardiology. Traditionally, echocardiography is taught at the postgraduate level, mainly during cardiology fellowship. 1 The creation of hand-held ultrasound has made ultrasound learning more popular and expanded to residency and medical school levels. 2 Small studies suggested that learning cardiac ultrasound and/or point-of-care ultrasound during medical school was feasible [3][4][5][6] and can help improve understanding of cardiac physiology and anatomy 7,8 as well as physical exam skills. 3 However, cohesive cardiac ultrasound curricula are lacking in medical school. To date, there is no large study to evaluate

FoCUS cardiac ultrasound training for undergraduates based on current national guidelines: a prospective, controlled, single-center study on transferability

“…The data obtained in the second test show a significant increase in technical knowledge in the course group in comparison with the control group, a finding that is also consistent with the results for subjective competence assessments in the course group. Earlier studies also demonstrated this, although in the present study the training time and training formats were very different [22][23][24][25][26][27]30]. A possible extension of the present training curriculum, which was adapted from the DGAI guidelines [37], might be to use standardized digital tests as well as practical examination formats [61].…”

“…In general, written tests [ 20 , 22 , 24 , 25 , 30 ], practical examination formats [ 20 , 61 ], and self-assessments using questionnaires [ 61 ] are used to test improvements in skills. The test section on “figural intelligence” was intended to investigate whether the groups were comparable in relation to spatial orientation.…”

“…Teaching and learning practical cardiac-specific ultrasound skills in the context of student (pre)clinical training has been the subject of recent scientific investigations [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. However, the educational approaches published so far vary widely, [32,33].…”

“…Alongside the use of analogue learning materials [28], there is also a clear trend toward increasing digitalization in ultrasound training [23,29,30,55,56]. The development and use of e-learning tools [24] should be intensified in the future so that echocardiographic skills can be taught using a "blended learning" approach [32,57] -a view that is also supported by some of the text comments provided in the evaluations. Since information about pathological findings was only conveyed in theoretical form in the present approach, the use of ultrasound simulators might allow a more practically oriented form of pathology training that would not have to take place directly on the patient [23,31,58].…”

Recognition of emerging cardiac diagnoses by echocardiography in 5th-year medical students — the role of focused e-learning

“…Therefore, providing future physicians with skills on how to acquire and interpret cardiac-echo data is becoming highly expected in medical curricula [4][5][6]. To meet these expectations the Board of the Faculty of Medicine of the Jagiellonian University Medical College (JUMC), supported by recent literature on online teaching [7][8][9] and by the experience of successful implementation of ECG e-learning [10,11], introduced in 2020/2021 academic year a subject entirely dedicated to this field. The subject has been included in the program of the 5 th year of the 6-year JUMC Faculty of Medicine curriculum.…”