Bedside Clinical Ultrasound Performed by Family Physicians in Adult Patients With Abdominal Pain in a Hospital Emergency Department: Protocol for a Pilot Quasi-Experimental Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is a valuable bedside tool that, with adequate training, can reduce diagnostic uncertainty and improve clinical accuracy. Abdominal pain is a frequent complaint in emergency departments and often requires imaging for appropriate management. OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of bedside clinical ultrasound performed by family physicians on length of stay, number of basic radiological tests, and need for further diagnostic evaluations in adult patients with abdominal pain. METHODS: This is a pilot quasi-experimental study assessing feasibility and viability, with a non-randomised control group, to be conducted in the Emergency Department of Hospital Comarcal de Riotinto. Adult patients (≥18 years) presenting with abdominal pain will be included. Both groups will receive standard care. In the intervention group, bedside ultrasound will be performed by trained family physicians; in the control group, ultrasound will be performed by radiologists only if deemed necessary. The primary outcome is the improvement in quality of care, assessed through a reduction in emergency department length of stay, fewer basic radiology tests requested, and diagnostic concordance. Secondary outcomes include the need for additional diagnostic studies and the appropriateness of referrals, evaluated through one-month follow-up and reconsultation. RESULTS: The first phase of the project began in 2023 with the validation of the data collection form. Subsequently, the patient satisfaction questionnaire was validated, and the results were published in the journal Atención Primaria. Patient recruitment is expected to be completed in December 2025. CONCLUSIONS: This study aims to demonstrate the clinical and organisational benefits of implementing bedside ultrasound by family physicians in emergency care. CLINICALTRIAL: Clinical trial number: not applicable. The study was classified as health services research rather than a clinical trial, so formal registration in ClinicalTrials.gov is not required.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.033 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.034 | 0.006 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".