Educational needs of Australian rural and remote doctors for intermediate obstetric ultrasound and emergency medicine ultrasound

Introduction: The aim of this research was to determine the educational needs of Australian rural and remote doctors for intermediate obstetric ultrasound and emergency medicine ultrasound. The main research questions were: what educational topics would rural and remote doctors prefer to learn about in intermediate obstetric ultrasound and emergency medicine ultrasound, and what were those doctors' preferred methods of delivery for an ultrasound education program. Method: A self-administered postal questionnaire containing a pre-paid return envelope was mailed to 344 Australian rural and remote doctors in December 2003. Results: 107 completed questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 32.7%. This was after the denominator was adjusted for the 17 doctors whose letters were returned to sender. The respondents included 23 (21.5%) female and 84 (78.5%) male doctors. Eighty doctors (74.8%) stated that they used ultrasound, and 27 (25.2%) said they did not. Seventy-seven (72%) indicated they had previously participated in some ultrasound education and training. The respondents stated that their main areas of educational need in intermediate obstetric ultrasound were ectopic pregnancy (76.6%), miscarriage (72%), intrauterine growth restriction (65.4%), transvaginal scanning (47.7%), detecting fetal abnormalities (47.7%) and morphology scanning at 18-20 weeks (41.1%). The main areas of educational need in emergency medicine ultrasound were focused abdominal sonography in trauma (63.5%), detecting foreign bodies (40.2%), gynecological ultrasound (39.2%), gall bladder and biliary tract (37.4%), abdominal aortic aneurysm (32.7%) and trauma bleeding (31.7%). Conclusion: Australian rural and remote doctors are using ultrasound technology to improve the clinical investigation and diagnosis of a large variety of clinical conditions in their family medical practices. This paper describes the results of research into the educational needs of this target group of doctors