Last week I shared with you a conversation I had with Dr. Resa Lewiss on the importance of mentoring. (In case you missed it, Dr. Lewiss is an amazing individual! She is a practicing emergency physician/Professor of Emergency Medicine who works in Philadelphia, is the creator of The Visible Voices podcast and is one of the founding members of TIME’s UP healthcare, a non-profit initiative that advocates for safety and equity in healthcare.This week, I get the pleasure of sharing with you our conversation on how COVID has affected how we teach bedside ultrasound. Check it out!

If you'd like to learn from us, check out courses.coreultrasound.com and if you're interested in an online ultrasound fellowship, check out ultrasoundleadershipacademy.com

Patients with acute pain can be challenging to manage in the ED. This week, I speak with two pain control experts: Dr. Alexis LaPietra and Dr. Katherine Vlasica. They both completed a pain management fellowship at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in New Jersey. Dr. LaPietra is the founder and creator of the Alternatives to Opiates (ALTO) program and the newly formed Pain Management Section of ACEP. Both are actively involved in a multi-modal approach to pain control in the ED, often including ultrasound-guided nerve blocks. This podcast is the audio version of the interview.  If you'd like to see the video of the interview, check out www.coreultrasound.com!

If you’re interested in some great online ultrasound education, check out Core Ultrasound Courses. If you’d also like to complete an online ultrasound fellowship, check out the Ultrasound Leadership Academy!

This week, Drs. Lindsay Reardon and Peter Weimersheimer talk to us about a case of shortness of breath they had in their community shop that ended up being a life-threatening pathology that was caught early enough to avoid the patient decompensating. Next week, we're publish part 2 of the podcast where we speak with the cardiologist on the case. 

Interested in an online ultrasound fellowship?  Check out www.ultrasoundleadshipacademy.com!

Pediatric patients with suspicion of congenital heart abnormalities can be very intimidating! In this week's podcast Jacob speaks with one of our pediatric POCUS experts regarding congenital heart abnormalities and how the average provider might be able to evaluate them.  Your point-of-care exam should never replace a cardiology-performed echo, but your exam can definitely help you in your work-up.  Here are Russ's tips:

1. Hypoplastic left heart - Look for a small left ventricle
2. Coarctation of the aorta - Look at the pulsed-wave Doppler waveform of the abdominal aorta
3. Heart failure - Look at the lungs

It appears that there is a higher incidence of thrombotic events in COVID-19 patients, including upper and lower extremity DVT, MI, CVA and heart attacks.  While there are many ways to diagnose thrombotic disease, point of care ultrasound is definitely an option.  

For a summary of the available literature on COVID-associated thrombosis, check out www.coreultrasound.com/COVID_thrombosis

Listen to the podcast and let us know what you think.  

Back in January 2020, I was in Vermont with Russ Horowitz. We had both been lecturing at Stowe EM and we got to talking about pediatric pneumonia. Russ told me about a case of a patient who was sent to his hospital with a radiographic diagnosis of pneumonia. Turns out the patient didn't have pneumonia, but had a thymus (which is a normal finding in neonates). Check out the podcast for more details!

If you want to see a tutorial on how to evaluate a patient for pneumonia,  check out https://www.coreultrasound.com/pneumonia/

Interested in an online ultrasound fellowship?  Check out http://www.ultrasoundleadershipacademy.com/

Let's be honest: Musculoskeletal ultrasound is unlikely to save a patient's life.  However, it can dramatically change your patients disposition and may help diagnose your patients with abnormalities much faster than without POCUS.  This week, Jacob talks with Zachary Risler (@zrisler) about his thoughts on the sonographic evaluation of hip effusions.

If you want to see a tutorial on how to perform the exam and exactly what to look for, check out https://www.coreultrasound.com/hip-effusion/

Interested in an online ultrasound fellowship?  Check out http://www.ultrasoundleadershipacademy.com/

In this video, Michael Prats, MD (guest host!) and Jacob Avila sit down with Yale Tung Chen and speak with him regarding his article, Results of a Prospective Study to Evaluate the Impact of Point-of-Care Ultrasound in the Enhancement of Gastrointestinal Bleeding Risk Scores. In this study, Dr. Chen showed that ultrasound was able to prognosticate hemodynamically stable patients for bad outcomes down the road.  Here's the link to the study.

Interested in an online ultrasound fellowship? Check out www.ultrasoundleadershipacademy.com

This week, we talk with Dr Peter Weimersheimer and Dr. Lindsay Reardon regarding their experience using ultrasound in the era of COVID.  Listen to the podcast to hear their thoughts on machine protection and decontamination, using portable devices and how to teach ultrasound.

Interested in an online ultrasound fellowship?  Check out www.ultrasoundleadershipacademy.com 

We're (obviously) pro-ultrasound when it comes to diagnostic work-ups.  This is especially true when you consider the overwhelming COVID pandemic. When using POCUS to evaluate your patients, you definitely don't want the machines to be a potential source of infection for your next patient.  In this podcast, Mike and Jacob discuss their thoughts on how to adequately safeguard your machine and your patients amid this pandemic. 

Castlefest has officially been moved to the November 9-13th.  Check it out here 

Interested in an online ultrasound fellowship?  Check out www.ultrasoundleadershipacademy.com

On March 10th we published part 1 of Cardiac Arrest Ultrasound with Cian McDermott.  We usually like to publish part 2 right after part 1, but instead we published a series of 'casts on COVID and lung ultrasound.  

But now, the wait is over! Check out PART 2 of Cardiac Arrest Ultrasound with Cian McDermott where we ask ourselves rapid-fire questions! 

If you are interested in some detailed show notes, check out Part 1 of the podcast on the www.Coreultrasound.com website. 

Announcements:

• ULA (Ultrasound Leadership Academy) has graciously offered to put their lung modules online FOR FREE.  Link here
• Castlefest 2020 is delayed until November 9th.  #COVID19
• Interested in an online ultrasound fellowship?  Check out www.ultrasoundleadershipacademy.com  

This week Anand Swaminathan (of EM:RAP and RebelEM fame) and I talk about medical education for the...more mature clinician.  Check it out!

Virtual Castlefest 2020 will be Nov 9-10 this year. For more info, click here: https://www.castlefest2020.com 

In this Podcast, Mike Mallin, Michael Prats and I speak with Marco Garrone (Twitter: @drmarcogarrone; Website: https://www.ultrasonica.net/), an Italian physician working on the front lines of Torino, Italy. Here, we talk specifics regarding COVID-19 and Ultrasound. Check out the podcast!

Interested in an online ultrasound fellowship? Check out www.ultrasoundleadershipacademy.com!

In this week's podcast, I sit down with Renee Dversdal and Amin Nikoozadeh, the CMO and CEO, respectively, of Vave Health.  They have produced a new wireless ultrasound transducer, the Vave Wireless that they're excited to tell us about.  Check it out!

This week I share a pretty spectacular case where Dr. Rob Farrow et al present a patient in whom bedside ultrasound helped appropriately disposition the patient (check out the article here). My two favorite pearls for this are the fact that patients that have symptoms suspicious of COVID also can have other diseases (like heart attacks and PEs) AND you should be scared not to use your bedside ultrasound due to the fact that you may miss something important.  Check it out!

This week I get the pleasure of sitting down (virtually) with Dr. Claire Heslop, a phenomenal educator and Emergency Physician in Toronto, Canada. We chat about a few of our choicest machine/patient/sonographer optimization tips.  Check out the top pearls below:

1. Make sure you have the right probe and have the ultrasound machine in the best setting for that specific exam.
2. Optimize depth
3. Optimize gain
4. Optimize your angle of insonance (angle of the beam relative to the structure you’re scanning.  The sound beam should be perpendicular to the thing you’re looking at)
5. Patient optimization –
   1. Position the patient
   2. Remove leads/stickers
   3. Clean up gel
6. Keep your patient informed on what you’re seeing (also, ask them if they want to be informed on what you’re seeing)
7. Think about ergonomics for the ultrasonographer –
   1. Drop the bed rails
   2. Lower/raise patient bed
   3. Place the ultrasound machine in your line of sight.

We’re still working out details on exactly how we’re going to do this, but we do know we will offer it November 9-10th 2020 and the URL for updates will be https://www.castlefest2020.com. If you have already paid for in person Castlefest, you have two options:

1. Full refund
2. We hold onto your spot (and registration) for Castlefest 2021.  If you do this, we will give you FREE ACCESS to virtual Castlefest 2020.

More details to follow soon, and if you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to reach out! (ultrasoundpodcast@gmail.com)

A few months ago I had a wonderful conversation with Scott Weingart regarding the RUSH exam (which he invented) and the sonographic diagnosis of cardiac tamponade. If you'd like to hear Scotts 2019 update on the RUSH exam, click here. 

This week I'm cross-posting our interview where he asked me about how to diagnose this at the bedside.  Check it out!

If you're interested in an online ultrasound fellowship, check out the Ultrasound Leadership Academy

In this weeks podcast Jacob speaks with Zack Risler, who is the Director of Ultrasound Education for the residents at Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia. Zack and I are both on the Ultrasound GEL podcast and a few months ago we started talking about our thoughts on resident education and decided to share it with you all! 

Enjoy!

If you are interested in an online ultrasound fellowship, check out www.ultrasoundleadershipacademy.com

This week we keep our basics series up and running!

A few months ago I had the privilege of speaking at the Tennessee American College of Emergency Physicians Scientific Assembly and the talk I gave was entitled "Top Five Bedside Ultrasound Applications".  Instead of a traditional "Top Five", I gave the two most life altering (COPD vs CHF and aortic dissection), the two most important procedures (US-guided IV and nerve blocks), and my favorite exam (Pneumonia).  If you want to watch the video (and hear why I'm so out of breath at the beginning), go to https://www.coreultrasound.com/top-5-pocus-tips/

This week I share with you a conversation that Dr. Kat Ogle and I had on medical education with emphasis on bedside ultrasound teaching.  We recorded this on location in Cartagena, Colombia while doing some workshops for the Developing EM conference. 

This podcast will be the first in a series of podcasts on education since we are fortunate enough to have a fresh batch of new physicians in July!

Interested in an online ultrasound fellowship?  Check out the Ultrasound Leadership Academy!