A Trial on the Effect of Simulation-based Diagnostic Abdominal Ultrasound Training

A Randomized Trial on the Effect of Simulation-based Diagnostic Abdominal Ultrasound Training

The investigators hypothesise that simulation-based training will have initial educational benefits and in coherence with the traditional apprenticeship model will heighten the educational end-level: That training on the simulator before clinical education will prepare the trainee for practice and thereby support more effective learning.

This study will be registered at ClincalTrials.gov and reported according to the CONSORT statement.

Setting: Clinical training will forego unaltered as current practice at the department of the individual resident's employment. The simulated training will be held as individual training sessions on the Schallware Ultrasound simulator (station 64; version 010013) placed at the Copenhagen Academy for Education and Simulation (CAMES), Rigshospitalet. Testing will be done on both the simulator at the Simulationcentre at Rigshospitalet, CAMES and on real life patients in the departments of radiology where the residents are employed.

Population: Participants are residents embarking on the first year of their specialized radiological training before any formalized ultrasound training. Enrollment is voluntary and in collaboration with their department of employment.

Intervention and controlled conditions:

A total of 22 residents at the beginning of their specialized radiological education and before their focused ultrasound training are randomised for two educational groups.

The simulation-based training modules will be in a recommend but not mandatory order starting with a general organ-identifying module and continuing with range of pathology modules with headlines: Introduction, Liver I, Liver II, Biliary System, Pancreas and Spleen, Urinary System, Vessels, Other Findings, and Mixed Cases.

The clinical part of training will forego unaltered for both groups for six weeks and all participants will fill out a log of all scans performed and when supervised the supervisor will score their scans using the OSAUS score.

The reviewer scoring the simulation-based test will be blinded. It is not possible to blind the reviewers of the clinical score (OSAUS) as it is the residents' clinical supervisors.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Fluent oral and written Danish or English.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Clinical ultrasound training or completed ultrasound courses with or without simulation training for more than one week in total prior to enrollment.
• Failure to complete simulation-based training or pass the simulation-based diagnostic ultrasound test. Failure to complete the logbook.