Virtual training of practical competences in sonography

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, aparticular 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 178students of human medicine. The study group simulated the sonography examination at home with adummy transducer using the Peyton method under the guidance of atutor via video seminar. In asubsequent 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 asonography machine can be taught to acertain extent digitally or at least in ahybrid form.