Teaching prenatal ultrasound to family medicine residents

Prenatal ultrasound is a powerful diagnostic tool, but there has been little research on how to teach ultrasound to family physicians. The available evidence supports teaching through didactics followed by supervised scanning. Didactic topics include physics and machine usage, indications, fetal biometry, anatomic survey, practice management, ethical issues, and resources. Supervised scanning reinforces the didactic components of training. A "hand-on-hand" supervised scanning technique is recommended for the transmission of psychomotor skills in these sessions. Curricula for teaching ultrasound should include information on which residents will be taught prenatal ultrasound, who will teach them, how to create time for learning ultrasound skills, and how to test for competency. The literature suggests that competency can be achieved within 25-50 supervised scans. Measures of competency include examination and qualitative analysis of scanning. Competency-based testing needs further development because no uniform standards have been established.