The database search yielded 357 unique publications. Following title and abstract screening 174 publications were retrieved for full text screening. A total of 121 records were excluded during full text screening and 53 publications were included for synthesis (Fig. 1 “PRISMA Flow diagram of literature search and review”) [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76]. Most included studies were cross sectional (68%) without longitudinal follow-up and most studies collected data prospectively (87%); most publications employed quantitative methods (71%) (Supplement 3). Seventy percent of records were published within the past 5 years (between 2018 and 2023). All studies that met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review were published in English.

PRISMA Flow diagram of literature search and review: This flow chart illustrates the study selection process for this scoping review, following PRISMA guidelines. The initial literature search was conducted on December 8, 2022, with a search update on July 6, 2023. The diagram outlines the number of records identified, screened, and excluded at each stage, along with reasons for exclusion. It details the numbers of records removed due to duplication, non-relevant titles/abstracts, and other exclusion criteria, as well as the final number of studies included in the analysis

Of the 53 studies, nine studies (17%) were deemed to exhibit high methodological quality, 22 studies (42%) were rated as having moderate quality and 22 studies (42%) were evaluated as having limited methodological quality (Supplement 4, Supplement 5). All studies meeting the inclusion criteria were analysed, regardless of methodological quality. The primary limitation was inconsistently reported and missing data, which varied across studies and affected generalizability. No studies were excluded based on data completeness alone, but missing data points were noted. While methodological limitations existed, our focus on descriptive data rather than outcome comparisons minimizes their impact on findings.

The publications included in this review had varying study objectives, that were grouped in three main categories: (i) studies focusing on training design (n = 27, 51%), i.e., training setup, practicalities, training curriculums and the feasibility of conducting POCUS trainings in a certain setting [24, 27,28,29, 31, 35, 37, 38, 43, 45, 47, 48, 51, 53, 55,56,57,58,59,60, 63, 68,69,70,71, 73, 76]; (ii) studies focusing on clinical utility (n = 7, 13.2%), i.e., appropriateness of POCUS or certain POCUS modalities in different, new or specific settings [25, 30, 39, 44, 52, 66, 74]; and (iii) studies evaluating short- and long-term POCUS competence and uptake (n = 19, 36%) [26, 32,33,34, 36, 40,41,42, 46, 49, 50, 54, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 72, 75]. Although some studies focused on clinical utility or evaluation of POCUS skills, all publications included in this review provided key facts on training designs.

The majority of included publications (n = 31, 59%) originated from the African continent, while 12 (23%) studies were conducted in South East Asia, seven (13%) in the Americas, two (4%) in the Eastern Mediterranean Region and one (2%) study was a multinational study conducted in Africa and the Americas (Fig. 2; Table 1).