Category Archives: Training

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.


Breakthroughs in Ultrasound Transducer Materials and Assemblies



About Our Guest 

Dr. Alan Tai received his PhD in physics, specializing in quantum well research, from Boston College. Alan has worked at various medical ultrasound technology companies, including Philips as an engineer and GE Healthcare as a scientist. He has managed new medical ultrasound transducer products
from development conception to successful commercial release. During his career in the engineering field, Alan has twelve issued patents. Alan is currently a Scientist and author at scienceandlife.org with research in DNA, Ultrasound and Quantum well structure of nanoelectronics.


POCUS World Conference: Keynote Spotlight



About Our Guest

Larry Istrail, MD, is a hospitalist physician, entrepreneur, and author of The POCUS Manifesto. He has been covered by NPR and the Washington Post for various medical startups he has founded. He is the creator of the online POCUS educational site POCUSMedEd.com, and is certified in point-of-care ultrasound by the Society of Hospital Medicine and the American College of CHEST Physicians.


POCUS in Medical Education



About Our Guest

Kate Deiling has been the Ultrasound Instructor at Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, NJ, since the inception of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) in the pre-clerkship medical curriculum in 2019. As part of the school’s simulation center, she teaches first and second-year medical students all modules of POCUS that include online education, a manikin-based high-fidelity simulator, and live hands-on training sessions utilizing 10 ultrasound machines. Together, these sessions help to facilitate the learning and development of essential psychomotor and cognitive skills for ultrasound probe handling, image interpretation, diagnoses, and clinical decision-making. In addition, a 2-week comprehensive POCUS elective is offered to fourth-year students with POCUS sessions for residents and faculty being developed.

Kate graduated from Thomas Jefferson University and has been practicing ultrasound for over 30 years in various capacities. Most recently, she worked extensively as a staff sonographer and was designated as the ultrasound education coordinator for a large multi-office radiology center. Early in her career, Kate worked exclusively in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and then moved on to a position as a clinical consultant for a major manufacturer. Following her work as an applications specialist, she went to work in perinatology at several antenatal testing units in both academic institutions and private settings. Her husband is also a graduate ultrasonographer from Thomas Jefferson University. For many years, Kate and her husband operated as independent contractors providing ultrasound services to radiology centers and several private offices. They have 3 adult children, including their oldest, who is a physician specializing in regional anesthesia at the University of Virginia and uses POCUS daily. Kate very much enjoys outdoor activities and traveling with family and friends, especially to US National Parks.


The Danish Society for Ultrasound in General Practice: A conversation with the Chair



Troels Mengel-Jørgensen, GP, is a General Practitioner in Vodskov, Denmark. Presently, he serves as the Chairman of the Danish Society for Ultrasound in General Practice (DAUS), a board member of the Danish College of General Practice (DSAM). Troels is also associated with the Center for General Practice at Aalborg University (CAMAAU) in Aalborg, Denmark.


Evaluating Muscle Trauma: POCUS as First Line Imaging



Alexander Talaska works as a radiologist in Vienna, focusing on musculoskeletal sonography in diagnostics and therapeutic interventions as well as emergency medicine. He loves the complexity of anatomical knowledge combined with dynamic scanning in MSK, solving a problem efficiently and integrating sonography in patients needs and best outcome in diagnostics. One of his favorites is peripheral nerve imaging. Already in the second year during his studies of medicine at the Medical University of Vienna (MUVI) he deeply got in touch with sonography. First teaching as a sono tutor from student to student, in between organizing the students initiative Sono4You on the same time while building up a team of enthusiastic students tutors in sonography besides his studies. In his radiology residency at the Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-Guided Therapy at the MUVI he combined his broadly trained sonoanatomy skills with a huge variety of pathologies and MRI skills, especially in musculoskeletal imaging. Since 2012, Alex has contributed regularly to several teaching and educational events to medical specialists, residents, sonographers and medical students. He also focuses on comparable documentation techniques and structured reporting in sonography, interdisciplinary discussions and usage of sonography with consequence. At the moment Alex works in one of the biggest trauma and rehabilitation centers in Vienna, accompanied by sports medicine. He still enjoys teaching and passes on knowledge whenever he can.

Additional Resources

Read this article to learn how emergency physicians can use POCUS to visualize the structures beneath the skin.

Learn how musculoskeletal POCUS supplements the emergency physicians’ process of identifying the extent of an injury and the correct course of action.

The Point-of-care Ultrasound Diagnosis of Tennis Leg case study provides insights on why the portable, cost-effective nature of POCUS makes it an excellent modality for diagnosing a tear of the medial head of the gastrocnemius.


A Lifetime of POCUS Learning



Arun Nagdev, M.D., is Exo’s Senior Director of Clinical Education. Separate from his capacity with Exo, he also serves as the Director of Emergency Ultrasound at Highland General Hospital as well as a Clinical Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). In his previous academic position, Dr. Nagdev started the point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) program and fellowship at Brown University. Dr. Nagdev is a highly respected international POCUS researcher and educator. He has been a thought leader throughout his career, publishing more than 90 peer-reviewed papers on various aspects of POCUS including pain management, cardiac arrest and volume resuscitation. His work led to recognition and national awards at both the American College of Emergency Medicine (ACEP) and Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). His desire to increase clinical POCUS education for residents and medical students has garnered him numerous teaching awards at Brown University, Highland Hospital and UCSF. Over the course of his career, he has been an invited lecturer for POCUS education at numerous national emergency medicine conferences (ACEP, SAEM, AAEM, etc). He currently serves as president of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) POCUS section and is the incoming president for ACEP Ultrasound section.


Keep exploring point-of-care ultrasound at POCUS.org.


Physician Assistants Pursue POCUS Training



Nicole Reichhart, PA-C, is Assistant Professor and didactic faculty for the California State University, Monterey Bay Master of Science Physician Assistant program. She earned a Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies from Albany Medical College in 2012 and completed an Emergency Medicine fellowship at Eastern Virginia Medical School in 2013. She has piloted a point-of-care ultrasound curriculum throughout the didactic phase of the MSPA program, preparing the students to enter their clinical year with a vast POCUS skillset. Nicole embeds POCUS into both the anatomy and physiology and clinical skills courses. She is passionate about implementing point-of-care ultrasound in physician assistant school curriculum and providing her students with opportunities to collaborate in the shared mission of improving global health and setting standards for excellence in POCUS. She has nine years of clinical experience as a PA, much of which has been in caring for patients in underserved communities. Nicole is a military spouse, mother of three children under 5, and enjoys a good brunch.


Overcoming POCUS Plateaus



Andre Kumar, MD, MEd, is a clinical assistant professor of internal medicine at Stanford University. He is the director for the Stanford Medicine Procedure Service, President of the Society of Hospital Medicine Bay Area, and an instructor for the Society of Hospital Medicine POCUS Certification Program. Dr. Kumar is passionate about researching POCUS for patient care and guiding future accreditation. He is currently the lead investigator for a multi-institutional study involving the use of POCUS for COVID-19, and he recently published two randomized trials investigating how to optimally train resident physicians with POCUS.

Resources

This study found that while a 2-day hands-on ultrasound course provides internal medicine physicians with an initial understanding of POCUS, there are barriers in transferring these abilities to clinical practice.

Find out how an interprofessional, near-peer workshop can help internal medicine residents develop POCUS skills, especially in programs where faculty expertise is limited.

Learn what will help residents overcome the barrier of unfamiliarity with documenting ultrasounds for diagnostic decision-making.

Discover how a phased implementation of POCUS curriculums has proven successful and could inform future educational programs.

Visit us at POCUS.org.