Medical students' performance on Point-of-Care Ultrasound stations during high stakes summative OSCEs at the...

Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is a valuable clinical skill that improves clinical care but requires substantial training and curricular resources. Validated assessment tools provide empirical evidence regarding trainee performance while also informing program-level evaluation. The University of Saskatchewan's medical school integrated two POCUS stations for use in objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) to assess skill acquisition. The purpose of our study is to describe implementation of POCUS OSCE stations with respect to student performance and station psychometrics.

Two POCUS applications (detection of pleural effusion and abdominal free fluid) were integrated into the Clinical Skills course OSCEs at the University of Saskatchewan's medical school. To assess student performance on each station, Borderline Regression Analysis was utilized as the standard-setting method, incorporating data from checklist and global rating.

First year medical students (n = 105) performed POCUS for the detection of pleural effusion (pass rate 70.86%) while second year students (n = 102) performed POCUS for detection of abdominal free fluid (pass rate 77.45%). Analysis of each POCUS station revealed high internal consistency, good correlation across checklist items and global rating (inter-grade discrimination), and low between-group variance.

First- and second-year medical students demonstrated pass rates of 70.86% and 77% respectively in the POCUS stations of each high stakes summative OSCE. Analysis showed strong reliability and correlation between technical checklists and global ratings, supporting the validity of the evaluation methods. These findings highlight that focused training on foundational POCUS applications leads to meaningful skill development.

The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-026-02753-0.