Use of an Online Ultrasound Simulator to Teach Basic Psychomotor Skills to Medical Students During the Initial COVID-19 Lockdown: Quality Control Study (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Teaching medical ultrasound (US) has gained in popularity in medical schools. Hands-on workshops are an essential part of teaching. The lockdown induced by COVID-19 kept our medical school from conducting these workshops. OBJECTIVE The aim of this paper is to describe an alternative method we used to allow our students to acquire the essential psychomotor skills requisite to produce US images. METHODS Our students should study online US courses. After this study, they had to practice exercises on a virtual simulator, using the mouse of their computer to control a simulated transducer. We measured the precision reached at the completion of simulation exercises. Before and after completion of the courses and simulator’s exercises, students had to complete a questionnaire dedicated to psychomotor skills. A general evaluation questionnaire was also submitted. RESULTS One hundred and ninety three students returned the pre-course questionnaire. One hundred and eighty four performed all the simulator exercises and 181 answered the post-course questionnaire. One hundred and ninety general evaluation questionnaires were sent and 136 returned (76%). The average pre-course score was 4.23 (SD 2.14), after exercising, the average post-course score was 6.36 (SD 1.82), with a significant improvement (p< .001). The post-course score was related to the accuracy with which the simulator exercises were performed (Spearman's rho 0.2664, p< 0.01). Nearly two-thirds (62.6%) of the students said they enjoyed working on the simulator. Seventy-nine (58.0%) students felt that they had achieved the course's objective of reproducing ultrasound images. Inadequate connection speed had been a problem for 40.2% of students. CONCLUSIONS The integration of an online simulator for the practical learning of US in remote mode has allowed substantial acquisitions in the psychomotor field of US diagnosis. Despite the absence of workshops, the students were able to learn and practice how to handle an US probe in order to reproduce standard images. CLINICALTRIAL Not considered as a RCT by our ethics committee (Req-2021-00589)