Category Archives: Africa

Virtual POCUS Mentorship and Training in East Africa, Peru & Yemen



About Our Guest

William Cherniak, MD, is an Emergency physician with training in family medicine and global public health. He is a cofounder and board chair of Bridge to Health Medical and Dental Canada & USA and the founder and CEO of Rocket Doctor Inc. Bill has had research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, Academic Medicine, PLOS ONE and given numerous speeches in Europe and North America on global health and development. Bill completed his medical school at the University of Calgary and residency at the University of Toronto. He completed a cancer fellowship at the U.S. Federal Government’s Center for Global Health in the National Cancer Institute/National Institutes of Health as well as a Master in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with a concentration in health in crisis and humanitarian assistance, while a Sommer Scholar with a full-scholarship. He is an Adjunct Professor with Northwestern University, Associate Faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, Division of Emergency Medicine.


Creating Impact in Rural Areas Using POCUS



Listen to Mark Shaffer, MD as he discuss his use of POCUS for rural healthcare. Dr. Shaffer grew up outside of Baltimore, Maryland and graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 2004 and from Harvard Medical School in Boston in 2009. Dr. Shaffer then moved south to Columbia, South Carolina where he completed his Family Medicine Residency at Richland Hospital in 2012. After residency, he felt called to international service and pursued a Global Health Fellowship with the USC School of Medicine. He worked in Tanzania, East Africa for over 2 years, first teaching doctors how to treat heart disease, and then running a large program for HIV patients. Eventually, he and his wife were ready to move closer to home. In 2015, Dr. Shaffer returned to the University of South Carolina School of Medicine and now works in resident training, hospital care, and outpatient care at the John A Martin Primary Health Care Center. He is board certified in Family Medicine with special interests in obstetrics, pediatric obesity, natural family planning and international health. While working in Tanzania Dr. Shaffer helped develop a program for bedside cardiothoracic ultrasound at the local hospital that persists today. He has published in the field of international POCUS FAST exam training and authored chapters and taught CME courses on bedside cardiac ultrasound.