standing emotions and managing emotions. The four subscales of theWLEIS are self-perception of emotions, other-perceptions of emotions,understanding emotions, and regulation of emotions. Results: Of the247 students approached, 152 agreed to participate (response rate 62%).The mean age was 24 (standard deviation [sd]�3), 61 (40%) were male,and 75 (49%) were White. The MSCEIT provides scores on a normativescale, where the normative mean is 100 and the normative sd is 15 onall subcales and on the overall scale. Thus, we expected to find medicalstudent means greater than 100. Instead, medical student means weresimilar to the general population on all 4 subscales and overall (means98.31 - 100.54), although medical students were less variable than thegeneral population (sds ranged from 7.9 to 12.9). The WLEIS does nothave extensive norms. However, medical student scores tended to behigher than available comparison groups (overall mean 5.06 vs 4.63),and again, variance of medical student scores was lower. Although boththe MSCEIT and the WLEIS purport to measure emotional intelli-gence, the correlations between the MSCEIT and WLEIS were lowerthan expected in the subscales (range 0.00 - 0.24), and the correlationbetween overall scores was 0.18. The MSCEIT was developed as anability test (e.g., what is the person in this picture feeling?), but theWLEIS was developed as a direct self-report measure (e.g., how goodare you at controlling your emotions?). Because of this difference in itemtypes, it is perhaps not too surprising that the scores on the two testsshow a small correlation. Conclusion: By two measurements, medicalstudents appear similar to the general population in terms of emotionalintelligence. This finding was particularly strong for the MSCEIT,which does not depend on a direct self-evaluation of emotional intelli-gence. Research is needed to understand the impact of emotional intel-ligence on performance in the third and fourth year of medical school,and also on how to better elucidate emotional intelligence of medicalstudents.

QS51. ULTRASOUND TRAINING OF SURGICAL ATTEND-INGS AND RESIDENTS: A PILOT STUDY OF LEARN-ING ASSESSMENT. Kathryn M. Tchorz1, Kresimira M.Milas2, Randall S. Friese3, Margaret M. Dunn1, Jonathan M.Saxe1, A. Marilyn Leitch3; 1Wright State University Boon-shoft School of Medicine, Dayton, OH; 2The Cleveland ClinicLerner College of Medicine, Cleveland, OH; 3University ofTexas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, TX

Introduction: Surgeon-performed ultrasound has become stan-dard practice in many surgical subspecialties, but efforts to testlearning goals and objectives in ultrasound training are not welldescribed. Therefore, a pilot study was conducted to study theeducational value of goal-directed test question design. Methods:Twenty-one study participants, comprised of trauma/critical careattendings and senior surgical residents, were enrollled in anintensive 1-day ultrasound course which was comprised of didac-tic and hands-on sessions. All participants had real-life experienceutilizing ultrasound in the trauma setting and gave verbal con-sent for study participation. Inclusion criterion was successfulcompletion of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Ultrasoundfor Surgeons CD-ROM module. A 20-question, pre-course test wasadministered, each with 5 multiple choice answers covering spe-cific course learning goals and objectives. Didactic sessions in-cluded: 1) Essential Ultrasound Physics Principles 2) TraumaUltrasound 3) Ultrasound in the SICU 4) Ultrasound for the AcuteAbdomen 5) Breast Ultrasound 6) Thyroid/Parathyroid Ultra-sound and 7) Focused Vascular Ultrasound. Hands-on sessionsincluded: 1) Interventional 2) Hepatobiliary/Vascular 3) FAST/Cardiac/Thoracic 4) Breast and 5) Neck/Thyroid/Parathyroid. Apost-course test was administered, consisting of the same 20 pre-test questions but in a re-arranged order. A passing grade was80% correct answers. There was no review of the pre-test ques-tions at any time during the course. All ultrasound instructorswere nationally recognized in ultrasound proficiency by the ACS

and/or surgical subspecialty associations. Results: Of the 21 studyparticipants, there were 10% (2/21) PGY 3s, 24% (5/21) PGY 4s, 33%(7/21) PGY 5s and 33% (7/21) attendings. Pre-course raw scores were15.3 � 2.2 and post-course scores were 17.7 � 1.1. Pre-course andpost-course pass rates were 57% and 100% respectively. Mann-WhitneyU Test p�0.57 (NS). Conclusions: Both faculty and surgical residentsidentified gaps in their ultrasound knowledge and applied the newlyacquired information to obtain a 100% pass rate on the post-course test.Emphasis on goal-directed question design may lead to increasedknowledge obtained from intensive educational sessions. However, amore sophisticated study design, coupled with the testing of long-termknowledge retention, will be required to properly study the impact ofthis type of educational endeavor.

QS52. EFFICACY OF THREE TOPICAL HEMOSTATICAGENTS APPLIED BY MEDICS IN A LETHAL GROININJURY MODEL. Vance Y. Sohn, Zachary Arthurs, MatthewEckert, Jason Perry, Matthew Martin, Alec C. Beekley, Rob-ert M. Rush, Jr.; Madigan Army Medical Center, Tacoma, WA

Background: Advanced topical hemostatic agents are increasinglyutilized to control traumatic hemorrhage. We sought to determinethe efficacy of three chitosan based hemostatic agents in a lethalgroin injury model when applied by combat medic first responders.Methods: After creation of a standardized femoral artery injury in agoat model, medics attempted hemorrhage control with standardgauze dressing followed by randomization to one of three hemostaticagents in this two tiered study. In the first tier, medics were ran-domized to either a chitosan based one-sided wafer (OS) or a dual-sided, flexible, roll (DS). In the second tier, medics were randomizedto the flexible DS dressing or a chitosan powder (CP). Efficacy ofgauze, each chitosan agent, proper application, and participant sur-veys were obtained and included for analysis using univariatetechniques. Results: From January 2007 to June 2007, 55 (45%) DS,36 (29%) OS, and 32 (26%) CP agents were used to treat 123 activelybleeding arterial injuries in 64 animals. Standard gauze failed tostop hemorrhage in 122 (99%) groins. Hemostasis at 2 and 4 minutesare provided in graphic format (p > 0.05). Although all threechitosan agents were marginally effective at 2 minutes, the recom-mended time for application, hemostasis improved after 4 minutes.The DS dressing was the most effective, controlling hemorrhage 76%at 4 minutes. Of the failures, 3 (25%) DS and 9 (53%) OS were due toimproper application. End-user survey results demonstrated thatmedics preferred the DS dressing 77% and 60% over the OS and CP,respectively. Conclusions: Chitosan based bandages are significantlymore effective at hemorrhage control compared to standard gauze fielddressings. The dual-sided chitosan dressing demonstrated better hem-orrhage control than the one-sided dressing and the chitosan powderand was less likely to fail despite application errors.

QS53. PASSING A VIRTUAL REALITY-BASED CURRICU-LUM AND SKILLS EXAM IMPROVES LAPARO-

290 ASSOCIATION FOR ACADEMIC SURGERY AND SOCIETY OF UNIVERSITY SURGEONS—ABSTRACTS