Publication date: Dec 25, 2024

Point-of-care neuromuscular ultrasound (NMUS) is increasingly used in the evaluation of peripheral nervous system disorders; however, there remains a gap in education and training for neurology residents. We evaluated whether neurology residents can feasibly be trained in basic NMUS skills and nerve cross-sectional area (CSA) measurement and whether they value incorporation of this training into their curriculum. Participants included neurology residents (postgraduate years 1-5) at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). All completed pretraining and posttraining surveys using a Likert scale, rating their confidence in independently performing NMUS and their degree of agreement regarding the educational value of NMUS training. Residents underwent training (7 hours) comprising 1 didactic and 2 hands-on sessions, detailing NMUS of median, ulnar, and fibular nerves. Participants could then opt-in to a posttraining testing session where CSA measurements (mm) of the median, ulnar, and fibular nerve at multiple sites were independently performed on 3 healthy volunteers and compared with measurements obtained by the trainer. Eighteen residents participated in training and pretraining/posttraining surveys. Nine completed the testing component. Nerve CSA measurement reliability between the trainer and trainees across all nerve sites combined was very good (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] 0. 93, 95% CI 0. 83-0. 96) but varied by nerve and site. ICC was good to very good (0. 62-0. 95) except for the ulnar nerve-distal forearm/wrist (0. 39-0. 58) and fibular nerve-fibular head (0. 12) sites. The coefficient of variation (CoV) across all sites was 19. 6% (95% CI 17. 3-21. 8) and best for the median nerve-wrist site at 15. 5% (9. 8-20. 8). The mean absolute difference between trainer and trainee measurements was low (

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