Southern medical journal
October 2, 2026 · via Europe PMC
Creating Core Internal Medicine Residency POCUS Curriculum by Partnering With the Emergency Department.
Park P, Koscumb P, Ahmed N, Carter J, Davis E, Hill TP.
AI summary — for doctors, generated from the abstract only
Partnering with the emergency department, which already has in-house POCUS-trained faculty, is a practical way for internal medicine residencies to launch a point-of-care ultrasound curriculum without hiring new experts.
What was studied
A 2023 pilot at the University of Texas Medical Branch created a 2-week hands-on POCUS rotation for postgraduate year-1 internal medicine residents, co-taught by emergency department faculty and ultrasound technologists.
Key findings
- Of 40 residents, 24 completed pre/post knowledge quizzes and confidence surveys, and 14 completed a skills assessment.
- Significant improvement was seen across all three evaluation methods (knowledge, confidence, and skills).
Clinical relevance
Internal medicine program directors facing the common barrier of lacking in-house POCUS experts can use emergency department partnerships as a feasible, replicable model to get a curriculum started.
Who should care
Limitations
Single-institution pilot with incomplete assessment completion (14-24 of 40 residents per measure), limiting generalizability and introducing possible response bias.
Consider partnering with your emergency department's already-POCUS-trained faculty as a low-barrier way to start a resident ultrasound curriculum rather than waiting to recruit dedicated in-house experts.
This is an AI-generated summary of the published abstract, not a clinical recommendation. It may not reflect the full text or subsequent updates — verify against the original source before acting on it.
Abstract
Objectives
Diagnostic point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) increasingly is recognized as a valuable bedside assessment tool; however, the most commonly cited barrier to starting a POCUS curriculum in Internal Medicine residency has been the lack of in-house experts. We propose collaborating with the emergency department because all of their faculty are POCUS trained during residency.
Methods
At the University of Texas Medical Branch, we partnered with the emergency department to create a hands-on core rotation starting in 2023 for all postgraduate year-1 residents to improve their skills, knowledge, and confidence with diagnostic POCUS. The residents watched didactic videos in addition to working with faculty and ultrasound technicians one to one for 2 weeks on live patients.
Results
The efficacy of the curriculum was evaluated using a pre- and postcourse knowledge quiz, a confidence survey, and a skills assessment. Out of 40 residents, 24 completed the written knowledge quiz and confidence survey, and 14 completed the skills assessment. Overall, the data showed significant improvement in all three evaluation methods.
Conclusions
The success of starting a new POCUS curriculum depends heavily on the ability of the program to recruit expert educators, and that degree may vary by institution. We believe this study shows one way that success may be achieved.
DOI
10.14423/smj.0000000000002023
PMID
42826393
Research metadata (titles, abstracts, authors, publication dates) is sourced from Europe PMC, which aggregates content from PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and other providers under the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM/NCBI). NLM does not claim copyright on abstracts; the original journal publishers or authors may hold rights to the full articles. AI-generated summaries are derived only from the abstract, never the full text, and are always labeled as AI-generated.
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