Teaching neurological disorders with ultrasound: A novel workshop for medical students

The goal of this study was to assess if a neurological disorder ultrasound workshop for the first-year medical students significantly enhanced the students' ability to retain and apply concepts related to neuroanatomy and neurophysiology.

We performed a prospective study to evaluate student performance before and after an optional ultrasound workshop. Data were collected through a within-population pretest-posttest design. Purposive sampling was used to recruit first-year medical students for this study. The six stations were transcranial doppler ultrasound, ocular ultrasound, ultrasound-guided external ventricular drain placement, high-intensity focused ultrasound for brain lesions, carotid artery scan with ultrasound, and ultrasound-guided central line placement. We used a pre-post workshop survey to identify opinions and perceptions about ultrasound and a pre-post workshop test to assess knowledge about neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and related ultrasound topics.

Twenty-two 22 first-year medical students consented to participate in this study. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed a statistically significant difference in pre- and posttest scores, suggesting that participants demonstrated higher levels of medical knowledge related to neurological physiology, anatomy, and ultrasound after participating in the workshop. The analysis of the pre-post survey showed participants attributed greater value to ultrasound as a useful tool for their future medical practice after participation in the event (Z = -2.45, P = 0.014).

There is value in integrating experiences with ultrasound into the neurological disorder block of medical school. Future studies, with a larger sample size, are needed to further explore the efficacy of this workshop in enhancing knowledge retention.