Using Four-Component Instructional Design to Create an Interactive Point-of-Care Ultrasound Curriculum for Physician Associate Students.

Introduction: Many physician assistant/associate (PA) programs lack point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) education in the PA curricula and a standardized approach to ultrasound training. The four-component instructional design (4C/ID) model merges 4 concepts for developing effective instructional design content for complex content delivery, such as ultrasound. This research study created an interactive, 2-part ultrasound curriculum with an instructional designer for PA students using the 4C/ID model.

Methods: Two interactive ultrasound curriculum models were created from the 4C/ID model using a knowledge-based precurriculum quiz, learning tasks with online modules and recordings, part-task practice with ultrasound experts, skills checkoffs, and a postcurriculum quiz including questions on students' perspectives of ultrasound. Two-tailed paired t-test analysis assessed the effectiveness of training.

Results: Evaluation of prelearning and postlearning quizzes demonstrated multiple statistically significant assessments supporting the use of instructional design technology for a PA program's ultrasound curriculum.

Discussion: This small study demonstrated that the 4C/ID model may be beneficial for PA POCUS training. The 2-part interactive curriculum improved PA student competency of ultrasound principles and applications and increased confidence for future clinical use of ultrasound.