Point-of-Care Ultrasound in Medical Education — Stop Listening and Look

With some clinical studies indicating that diagnostic ultrasonography can be superior to the physical exam, several U.S. medical schools now offer ultrasound training early in the undergraduate curriculum — though not everyone agrees on the wisdom of that approach. In 1816, the French physician René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec, inspired by children communicating by tapping a pin on one end of a long piece of wood and listening at the other end, rolled a “quire” of paper into a cylinder to listen to the heart of a sick young woman, instead of placing his ear directly on her bare chest. This improvised tool designed to protect a patient's modesty evolved into the wooden instrument that eventually became the modern stethoscope. Nearly 200 years later, the stethoscope is unique among medical devices in that it is used by virtually every type of physician . . .