Publications & Resources

Simulation-Based Assessment of Ultrasound Proficiency

Oct 2019

Markus R. Iseli, John J. Lee, Katerina Schenke, Seth Leon, Deborah Lim, Barbara Jones, and Li Cai

Ultrasound proficiency is an important skill for military and nonmilitary personnel. This study looks at the development of a validated method to assess both declarative and procedural skills. The study consisted of a user model validation part and a skill decay part. Methods were developed for taking data from a SonoSimĀ® ultrasound training solution hardware and software tool and processing the data for use in a Bayesian network (BN). A total of 86 participants were assessed on the knowledge and skills of fetal biometry in obstetrics (OB, n = 58) and of internal jugular vein cannulation (IJV, n = 37). We found that scanning experience, declarative knowledge, procedural skills, and model inferences strongly correlated with each other overall: Better performance (declarative and procedural) correlated with higher scores predicted by our model. Experienced participants performed better than inexperienced participants on many metrics and exhibited smaller variations in performance. We found small but not statistically significant skill decay which could be indicative of a testing effect and individual differences.

Iseli, M. R., Lee, J. J., Schenke, K., Leon, S., Lim, D., Jones, B., & Cai, L. (2019). Simulation-based assessment of ultrasound proficiency (CRESST Report 865). Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).