[Virtual training of practical competences in sonography]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a particular challenge in the transition to digital teaching was to teach practical skills such as sonography of the head and neck online. The aim of this study was to validate the digital sonography course for medical students established at the Freiburg University Hospital ENT Department.

Participants were 178 students of human medicine. The study group simulated the sonography examination at home with a dummy transducer using the Peyton method under the guidance of a tutor via video seminar. In a subsequent learning success check, the results of the students in the online course were compared with those of the control group, who learned sonography in the classroom.

Students of the online course achieved comparable results to the classroom group.

This study shows that practical skills which require extensive equipment such as a sonography machine can be taught to a certain extent digitally or at least in a hybrid form.