Category Archives: General

General

FiGBUS is going to the RSNA

Yay! FiGBUS is hitting the road and heading off to Chicago at the end of this month for the Radiological Society of North America’s Annual Conference. All the major medical imaging vendors exhibit and launch all their latest hardware and equipment at the RSNA each year so we’re hoping to bring you some exciting new ultrasound equipment updates from the exhibition floor. Watch this space.

General

Learn to do the easy stuff first

Learn basic ultrasound skills first. Start with the lung, the gallbladder or with free abdominal fluid. Practice on the easy stuff. The science is constantly evolving. New studies demonstrating the value of bedside ultrasound and demonstrating its clinical value get published every month. Don’t wait until a headline grabs your attention and makes you think “I must start doing this” before you start learning. With basic ultrasound skills already learnt, picking up new ones is a cinch.

General

Don’t become discouraged

Learning to perform ultrasound takes a long time and a lot of practice. It’s also something which is not yet routinely practiced on the wards or in clinic. This means getting access to perform scans and then feedback on your scanning is difficult. This also means most people either never start the learning journey or drop out of learning early on. But if you are willing to persist, if you can delay the gratification that comes with learning this skill, for as long as it takes, the skill is yours to own.

If you learn to do the difficult stuff which most people can’t do, then very soon, people will start asking you to do it regularly. This makes you one step closer to being indispensable. Being indispensable gives you choices, job offers, promotions and job security.

So persevere. Put in the time. In this world “discretionary effort is King”. Sometimes entire careers are built during lunchtimes and after hours.

General

Why most program bedside ultrasound teaching sucks

At the moment, many schools treat bedside or point of care ultrasound (POCUS) like an add-on, an option, a “we should probably include something on bedside ultrasound somewhere” afterthought on most curricula. Also the number of physicians actually doing it in practice is relatively small and the research base for proving its clinical benefit is limited to certain applications and clinical scenarios. The machines themselves are still quite expensive. Bedside ultrasound is still in its infancy as a tool.

At some point in the (near) future, ultrasound units will be cheap, handheld, and in the pocket of every clinician who wants one. The research base will have expanded.  POCUS will become an extension to clinical examination on every patient.

How do we get from point A to point B? There are many teachers who can tell us how to take a history from a patient and many who can show us how to examine the abdomen but few who can show us how to use an ultrasound unit.

What it will take, is a generation of champions who stepped up and taught themselves, who put in the time to read, practice, get feedback and learn. Call them early adopters, advocates, trail blazers or whatever suits but these are the ones who will change the way we teach and practise medicine to future generations.

Will it be you?

General

Learning bedside ultrasound – Timely and quality feedback

Good quality and timely feedback supercharges learning 10x but is difficult to find.

Find a supervisor who will watch over your shoulder while you scan and give you tips on improving and optimizing your image.

Learn how to save, store or print images. Show these to an expert later and get their feedback. Carry around a USB thumb drive for this purpose but remember to respect patient privacy.

Carry around a notebook and note the names of the patients you scan then check back later after they have had their formal ultrasound or echo study and compare your findings.