The implementation of a longitudinal POCUS curriculum for physicians working at rural outpatient clinics in Chiapas, Mexico

BACKGROUND: Medical care in resource limited settings is challenging, particularly with limited access to diagnostic and imaging studies. The most portable and cost effective diagnostic imaging in these areas is ultrasound. Ultrasound is a very teachable skill with a short, single intensive training course and hands-on teaching; however, there are limited data on a longitudinal point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) curriculum in resource limited settings. The goal of this intervention is to develop an effective longitudinal POCUS curriculum for local physicians working in rural clinics in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, and evaluate its effectiveness on patient care. METHODS: This is a 12-month longitudinal ultrasound educational curriculum for local supervising physicians working in rural clinics in Chiapas, Mexico. The 10 clinics are a collaboration of the Mexican government and Compañeros En Salud with limited access to any diagnostic imaging or laboratory studies. The investigators assisted in obtaining four portable ultrasound machines for use in the clinics. Next, they organized four point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) teaching sessions over a year, each session focusing on several distinct concepts. The sessions included lectures and hands-on teaching with both healthy volunteers and with patients in the various communities. Over the 12 months, the POCUS were logged and the majority of images saved. The logs were analyzed to determine if POCUS affected the medical management of the patients. The primary investigator reviewed 35.2% of the total ultrasounds completed, which was 52.2% of the save images, for quality assurance and feedback. RESULTS: Over the 12 months, there were 584 ultrasound studies documented. The most common study was a transabdominal obstetric examination (45.5%) followed by abdomen/pelvis (26.6%) and musculoskeletal (5.7%) and skin and soft tissue (5.7%). The use of POCUS changed the patient diagnosis after 194 scans (34%) and changed the clinical management for the patient encounter in 171 (30%) scans. In the 194 scans in which POCUS changed the diagnosis, the clinical management was changed, as a direct result of the scan results, in 152 (78.4%) of those patient encounters. CONCLUSION: A longitudinal POCUS educational curriculum is an effective way to equip local physicians in resource limited countries with a tool to improve their clinical management of patients.