Teledidactic peer-tutored musculoskeletal ultrasound training for medical students-the TELMUS study

Despite growing interest in musculoskeletal ultrasound (MSUS), training opportunities are often limited due to staff shortages and disbalances of expertise between rural and urban areas. Teledidactic approaches have the potential to expand access to training opportunities. This study aims to compare the effectiveness of teledidactic peer-tutored MSUS training to a conventional approach.

A teledidactic course was held by a student tutor following a validated MSUS curriculum. An on-campus MSUS training taught by physician lecturers served as a control. Students were randomly assigned to one of both study groups. Objective structured clinical examinations (OSCE) were conducted before and after the training to objectively measure the learning outcome of the participants. Handheld ultrasound devices (ButterflyIQ®) and iPads (Apple Inc., eighth generation) were provided to the students for the MSUS course.

Thirty medical students participated in the study. Prior to the course, baseline OSCE scores were recorded as 13.03/63 (SD ± 4.20) for the on-campus cohort and 13.00/63 (SD ± 6.04) for the teledidactic group. In the post-training OSCE evaluation, the on-campus cohort attained an average score of 56.80/63 (SD ± 4.22), while the TELMUS group averagely achieved 58.53/63 points (SD ± 3.52). While all students' skills increased over time, there was no significant difference between the two cohorts either before or after the course.

Peer-tutored, teledidactic MSUS training showed to be non-inferior to the conventional approach and is a promising approach to reduce local and global disparities in educational opportunities regarding MSUS.