Blog

Time is of the essence in the emergency department, where a prompt diagnosis can litreally mean the difference between life and death.

Dr. T. Sivashanmugam MD, DNB in Anaesthesiology, PDCC, FRCP is a Professor in Anaesthesiology at Mahatma Gandhi Medical College & Research Institute, a 1500-bed tertiary care teaching university hospital at Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, India.

Emergency physician Dr. Elijah Katz has worked with Sonosite ultrasound machines for several clinical and teaching missions around the world. Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is a large part of Dr. Katz’s practise both at home and abroad, and he currently serves as a Fellow in Combined Clinical Ultrasound and Global Health in the Department of Emergency Medicine at University of Texas, San Antonio.

Dr. Martin Kelly is an attending physician in the Emergency Medicine Residency Program at Darnall Army Medical Center, Fort Hood, Texas. He has been involved in mission trips for 15 years, most of them in conjunction with Maranatha Volunteers International located in Sacramento, California. Dr. Kelly was kind enough to write a report about this nonprofit and its collaboration with Sonosite.

Australian nonprofit Globalinks Medical Foundation is dedicated to providing healthcare to global communities in remote locations where access to healthcare services is limited. Globalinks was founded by Dr. Peter Locke and his wife Carolyn following their experiences volunteering overseas, where they witnessed a prevalence of of illness, disease, and child mortality rates, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

The rapid scanning and dynamic imageing capabilities offered by point-of-care ultrasound make it an invaluable tool for emergency medicine. Dr. Enrique Ortiz Villacian (from Emergency Services at Donostia University Hospital in San Sebastián) and Dr.

Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) systems are becoming a common sight in nephrology departments and renal dialysis clinics, helping clinical staff to evaluate and effectively access the vasculature of dialysis patients. Dr. Jean-Yves Bosc, a nephrologist and vascular doctor working at the nonprofit private health establishment AIDER SANTÉ in the South of France, has been a champion of ultrasound for over a decade.

Because ultrasound is not extensively taught in medical schools, clinicians are often left scrambling to learn this essential technology in an often chaotic ER or other high-pressure situations. Sonosite Institute was designed to address this very issue. Sonosite Institute empowers POCUS users to learn ultrasound techniques, applications, and best practices wherever and whenever it’s convenient for them.

Emergency physician Dr. Trish Henwood, president and co-founder of the PURE Initiative, has been in the frontlines of the battle against Ebola since 2014, when she traveled to Liberia to confront an outbreak. Dr. Henwood recently wrote an article for The New England Journal of Medicine outlining the lessons she has learned since those extremely challenging days.

In a July 2019 study published in Annals of Emergency Medicine, researchers determined that ultrasound-guided line insertions improves the first-attempt success rates over traditional palpation methods for children with predicted difficult access.

Sports medicine specialist Dr. David Sealy, MD CAQSM works with the Volunteers in Medical Missions, a Christian medical organisation that sends 15 to 18 medical missions a year to countries around the world. Dr.

Emergency physician Dr. Chau Pham is the founder and Co-Chair of Canadians Helping Kids in Vietnam (CHKV), an organisation established in 1995 to help improve the lives of the poorest in Vietnam by improving conditions that directly empower children.

Image courtesy of Acclaim Physician Group