Introductory Resident-Led Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Case-Based Ultrasound Workshop for Medical Students

The core clinical ultrasound milestones for medical students in the United States do not cover the majority of clinical topics pertinent to the specialty of physical medicine and rehabilitation. In addition, one of the major barriers to teaching physical medicine and rehabilitation residents ultrasound is a lack of instructors with sufficient experience. A solution to both of these problems is the establishment of a resident-led case-based ultrasound workshop for medical students that introduces them to the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation. This novel workshop involved 30 medical students and 9 resident instructors. The students participated in five hands-on interactive physical medicine and rehabilitation clinical cases where each student had 5 mins per case to scan. A program evaluation survey showed that the workshop achieved the objectives of increasing medical student confidence in describing the role of a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician and physical medicine and rehabilitation patient populations as well as confidence using ultrasound for evaluating the peripheral nervous system and musculoskeletal system. Resident instructors endorsed that the workshop was beneficial for improving their physical medicine and rehabilitation ultrasound teaching skills and also increased their interest for contributing to future workshops. The intention of this project is to reproduce similar initiatives in physical medicine and rehabilitation residency training programs across the United States.