Objective Evaluation Of Sonographic Skill In Focussed Assessment With Sonography For Trauma Examinations

Purpose With the recent uptake of competency-based medical education, there has been extensive study of objective skill evaluation for needle-based and laparoscopic interventions on phantoms simulating human anatomy. In these contexts, it has been shown that skill evaluation metrics can distinguish novice from expert operators [1]. Upon further validation, these metrics could be used to supplement expert knowledge in the medical education process, providing standardization and feedback during unsupervised training. Sonographic skill, however, has received significantly less attention and studies have been limited to motion economy metrics. Here, a method is proposed for objective evaluation of sonographic skill by assessing whether relevant anatomical structures are scanned. To test this method, Focussed Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (FAST) human will be considered. FAST is a quick screening test for internal bleeding in the pericardium and abdominal cavity after trauma, for which ultrasound skill is of great importance. Because ultrasound has no known adverse effects on humans, the FAST examinations can be performed on a human volunteer, rather than a phantom, thus improving the system’s fidelity.