• Elke Platz, Katja Goldflam, Maria Mennicke, Emilio Parisini, Michael Christ, and Christian Hohenstein.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA. eplatz@partners.org
• Ann Emerg Med. 2010 Dec 1;56(6):660-7.

Study ObjectiveTraining physicians in new skills through classroom-based teaching has inherent cost and time constraints. We seek to evaluate whether Web-based didactics result in similar knowledge improvement and retention of basic ultrasonographic principles and the Extended Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (EFAST) compared with the traditional method.MethodsPhysicians from 2 German emergency departments were randomized into a classroom group with traditional lectures and a Web group who watched narrated lectures online. All participants completed a pre- and posttest and a second posttest 8 weeks later. Both groups underwent hands-on training after the first posttest. A control group completed the 2 initial tests without didactic intervention.ResultsFifty-five subjects participated in the study. Both the classroom and Web group showed significant improvement in pre- and posttest 1 scores (75.9% versus 93.9% and 77.8% versus 92.5%; P<.001 for both), with similar knowledge retention after 8 weeks (88.6% and 88.9%; P=.87). No statistically significant difference in mean test scores could be found between the 2 groups at each point: -1.9% (95% confidence interval [CI] -5.2% to 1.4%) for the pretest, 1.4% (95% CI -0.6% to 3.4%) for posttest 1, and -0.3% (95% CI -3.9% to 3.3%) for posttest 2. The control group showed no learning effect without intervention (83.3% versus 82.8%, ; P=.88).ConclusionWeb-based learning provides the potential to teach physicians with greater flexibility than classroom instruction. Our data suggest that Web-based ultrasonography and EFAST didactics are comparable to traditional classroom lectures and result in similar knowledge retention.Copyright © 2010 American College of Emergency Physicians. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

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