Study design
We have performed a randomized controlled trial to assess the effects of a serious game training session on the performance of a POCUS examination on healthy volunteers. We recruited a group of third year medical students at the University of Groningen. Data were collected during a time span of two weeks in April 2021 at the University Medical Center Groningen. Participants were eligible if they had no previous ultrasound experience. They were recruited via a WhatsApp group for third year medical students (N = 256) with an invitation to apply for the research by an online Google form. All potential participants who responded to the Google Forms were invited to enroll themselves in an online document with time slots. In this document there were several possibilities for days and time slots. Every day the intervention and control group were in succeeding order: first intervention, then control, then intervention again. In this online document it was not named which time slot belonged to the intervention or control group, thereby blinding the participants for the group in which they enrolled themselves. All participants provided written informed consent. The study exam was recorded with a smartphone mounted to a standard, showing both the probe movements (only hand and probe) and the corresponding ultrasound image, in order to make the videos available for review afterwards by two independent experts and the research team. A coding list was made to assure anonymity during review of the videos. A target population of at least 40 participants was chosen based on similar experiments [