A short report on the acquisition of point-of-care ultrasound skills and knowledge by the ambulance personnel in Hong Kong

Abstract

Background: Point-of-care ultrasound plays an important role in patient management in the prehospital setting. Prehospital ultrasound training for the paramedics has been developed in the West for many years. However, the present training curriculum for the local ambulance personnel does not include point-of-care ultrasound. This study is the first of its kind in Hong Kong on the feasibility of teaching ambulance personnel how to perform focused assessment with sonography in trauma by a 1-day course. Objective: It aimed to assess whether the ultrasound-naïve ambulance personnel could acquire the skills and knowledge of point-of-care ultrasound following a tailor-made training programme. Methods: This was a prospective observational study. The training programme was a 1-day course consisted of didactic lectures and hands-on practice. Each participant was assessed by a written test and a skills test. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the ambulance personnel and their results of the written and skills test. Significance testing was by Mann–Whitney U test and Spearman correlation test where appropriate. Results: Seventeen members of Ambulance Service Institute (Hong Kong Branch) participated in the programme. All of them currently are the ambulance personnel and they joined the programme via the captioned institute. Enrollment was voluntary. The median score in the written test was 20 out of 25. The median time to complete the four views of the focused assessment with sonography in trauma scan was 3.4 min. There was no significant relationship between test performance and educational background and work experience of the ambulance personnel. Conclusion: Training the local ambulance personnel point-of-care ultrasound is feasible. Their acquisition of skills and knowledge of point-of-care ultrasound after a 1-day course was satisfactory.