A longitudinal curriculum combining medical education, anatomy and ultrasound

Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is widely used as a non-invasive diagnostic tool to assist with bedside examinations for clinicians, and it is now being incorporated into undergraduate medical education curricula to encourage its future use in clinical practice. Despite its widespread incorporation, there are schools that have little exposure to POCUS. Some barriers to having such a curriculum include the need to teach POCUS as a cognitive and psychomotor skill and finding qualified instructors for this type of hands-on instruction. Promisingly, there has been evidence to suggest even short-term 2-week POCUS educational interventions during undergraduate medical education can yield increased utilization in clinical practice.1 This curriculum is an innovation in utilizing a longitudinal POCUS curriculum and integrating POCUS with anatomy and peer-to-peer medical education. The Training in Medical Education Program (TMEP) is an innovative curriculum led by core faculty in the departments of Pathology and Emergency Medicine that spans 9 months and incorporates three main pillars: medical education, anatomy and its correlation with POCUS. During this elective time, 15 third year medical students who completed all their required core clerkships participate in a set of activities on a weekly basis. TMEP students are responsible for dissecting cadavers and preparing prosections for the first year anatomy course. They then participate in didactics and hands-on POCUS training correlated with the anatomy. A longitudinal POCUS portfolio obtained of standardized patients allows for practice with each POCUS skill as well as individualized feedback on acquisition and quality of images. Sample POCUS themes include musculoskeletal, focused cardiac and lung, and hepatobiliary ultrasound. When students were confident with the teaching for anatomy and POCUS, they held peer-to-peer small group teaching sessions with pre-clinical first-year medical students alongside faculty educators, allowing for implementation of medical education pedagogical principles. This program is the first of its kind to integrate a longitudinal deep dive POCUS curriculum with adult learning theory and direct anatomical correlation. POCUS is applied anatomy, and this creates a strong link between the POCUS and anatomy education during TMEP. For many of the students who participated in the program, by serving as peer educators, they became more confident in becoming ‘POCUS champions’ to encourage POCUS use to others in the future, while also becoming more competent bedside educators. As more medical schools are transitioning to an accelerated pre-clerkship phase, a formalized longitudinal POCUS curriculum for post-clerkship students can allow for deeper exploration of clinically relevant anatomy and visualization of these structures. In addition, students had different POCUS backgrounds, different specialty interests and different personal objectives for the curriculum. This, along with the proximity of the learning and teaching of anatomy and POCUS, led to the realization of many novel clinical applications that became the origin for original research projects on POCUS. By engaging in TMEP, students also obtained valuable faculty mentorship from those passionate about POCUS. In summary, TMEP provided students with an opportunity to be lead peer educators in POCUS and anatomy alongside faculty educators. Anthony Nguyen: Conceptualization; writing—original draft; writing—review and editing. Elena Stark: Writing—review and editing. William Shyy: Writing—review and editing. Alan Chiem: Writing—review and editing; writing—original draft; conceptualization. All authors have met authorship criteria as outlined by the ICMJE for authorship, have reviewed the manuscript and agree with its contents for publication. The authors would also like to acknowledge the contributions of the inaugural TMEP class, which were essential to the success of the course. The authors certify that no ethical approval was sought or required for this publication. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.