Ultrasound is gradually getting into the clinician's toolbox, becoming a natural extension of the traditional physical examination. Exposing medical students to ultrasound may ensure its optimal use by them as doctors, while strengthening their accumulating medical knowledge.
Purpose: Investigating the impact of integrating a training tutorial of basic ultrasound skills, during the first clinical clerkship of medical students, using the "flipped classroom" approach.
Methods: A prospective study has been conducted during the internal medicine clerkship of fourth year students of the Technion Rappaport faculty of medicine. 16 students from one university hospital comprised the study group whereas another 16 from another hospital served as the control group. A website for basic ultrasound skills was developed in the Technion virtual learning environment. Both knowledge test and an attitude questionnaire were taken by the students of both groups at the beginning and at the end of the clinical clerkship. The study group was encouraged to work through the online contents, as a preparation to a couple of supervised hands-on workshops. The hands-on sessions were video-recorded and analyzed. Personal interviews were taken at the end of the clerkship. Data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Results: Students in the study group significantly improved their achievements in the knowledge tests (p-value of 0.0015), while no statistically significant change was found in the control group. All the students in the study group expressed great satisfaction from their basic ultrasound experience. Their attitude towards the utilization of ultrasound as a valuable clinical tool has changed, so as their confidence in their ability to utilize it. Students who accepted the challenge of the "flipped classroom" learning model benefited more from the practical experience and expressed their positive attitudes towards this non-traditional teaching approach.
Conclusions: Providing basic ultrasound skills to medical students at the very beginning of their clinical experience is both feasible and effective.
