A New Tool Assessing Trainees’ Interventional Musculoskeletal Ultrasound Skills

Poster Presenter: Stine Maya Dreier Carstensen, MD, PhD Fellow, Copenhagen Center for Arthritis Research (COPECARE), Center for Rheumatology and Spine Diseases and Centre for Head and Orthopaedics, Rigshospitalet Glostrup, Denmark, and Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, The University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Poster Title: A New Tool Assessing Trainees’ Interventional Musculoskeletal Ultrasound Skills

Poster Session C: Tuesday, Nov. 14

What is your poster about?
“My poster describes an explorative study that develops and collects different sources of validity evidence for an assessment tool that can be used to evaluate trainees’ interventional musculoskeletal ultrasound skills: the Assessment of Interventional Musculoskeletal Ultrasound Skills (AIMUS) tool. The tool can be used to provide structured feedback in daily clinical practice, to ensure end-of-training competence, and to design competency-based educational programs in the future.”

Why did you decide to investigate this topic?
“Interventional musculoskeletal ultrasound procedures are routinely performed in the daily care of patients with rheumatological diseases. However, the efficacy and safety of the procedures depend on the skills of the individual physician, and assessment of skills is therefore crucial. Nevertheless, no assessment tools supported by validity evidence exist.”

What are you working on next related to this research?
“We are planning studies that will examine different learning interventions (e.g., the use of rubber phantoms and virtual reality) and their effect on the trainees’ interventional musculoskeletal ultrasound skills acquisition. The newly developed AIMUS tool will be used to calculate the effect sizes.”

Education is one of the absolute most essential components when it comes to ensuring high-quality healthcare. I hope that my research will improve the understanding of which teaching methods work best for trainees.

Stine Maya Dreier Carstensen, MD

What excites you most about your work?
“Education is one of the absolute most essential components when it comes to ensuring high-quality healthcare. I hope that my research will improve the understanding of which teaching methods work best for trainees. Furthermore, it excites me to work with the development and examination of new assessment tools that hopefully will become an integral part of the future musculoskeletal ultrasound curriculum. A shift away from the ‘one-fits-all’ approach toward a more dynamic and personalized competency-based educational system — that’s my dream, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for its realization.”

What are you most looking forward to at ACR Convergence 2023 in San Diego?
“I am really looking forward to seeing what the other research groups in the category of Professional Education are presenting and hopefully extending my international network.”