A Report on Physician Wellness during the Transition from Community EM Physicians to Faculty in a New Residency Training Program

Background: Increasing priority has been placed on teaching point of care ultrasound (POCUS) while in medical school.Meanwhile, education has generally been shifting to virtual platforms.Despite some return to in-person learning, it is worthwhile to evaluate the efficacy of virtual learning, which may increase access to ultrasound education.Objectives: Evaluate if virtual ultrasound lectures deliver information as effectively and increase learner confidence similarly to in-person lectures.Methods: This cohort study anonymously surveyed medical students from three universities to analyze learner confidence and information retention from both in-person and videoconference lectures about the extended focused assessment of trauma (eFAST) exam.Both 30-minute lectures were given live, with a 10 minute demonstration on a model, and pre-and post-lecture surveys.Neither had hands-on training.Results: 117 learners were included (38 in-person, 79 virtual).A two-tailed T-test assuming unequal variances indicated significant improvement in percentage correct between pre-and post-tests (p<.001), (32.2% in-person and 36.9%virtual).There was no significant difference between the intervention groups' pre-or post-test scores (p=.23 and p=.40, respectively), indicating both interventions had similar knowledge baseline and gain.Both groups showed an improvement in confidence following the sessions (mean improvement of 1.7 points in-person, 1.8 virtual) which was not significantly different between the groups (p<.01).Conclusions: There was no demonstrated significant difference in learned information or learner confidence between in-person and virtual didactics, indicating students may attain the same content and confidence through both modalities.This study is limited due to non-paired surveys, making it difficult to analyze individual learners.Future work may include repetition with paired surveys, other ultrasound content, and general medical education.