The curriculum of the CUH emergency ultrasound fellowship is designed to prepare you for the role of Director of Emergency Ultrasound or general faculty within a Division of Emergency Ultrasound in any emergency department.
Scanning
Paramount to all else in your fellowship, you must become an expert sonographer. The skills you acquire in doing so will be invaluable to your career in emergency medicine and will make you a more skilled clinician. You should aim to become as proficient as an ultrasonography technologist in acquiring images and as competent as a radiologist in terms of interpreting images. Your skills need to reach a level where you feel confident in your own scans, both in identifying and ruling-out pathology, and in knowing when scans are inadequate to do so.
We will directly observe your scanning when possible, and assess your images and interpretations for adequacy when not. You will have scanning shifts with the emergency ultrasound faculty, both when they are working clinically, and when they are not.
Teaching
Learning how to teach ultrasound is a fundamental aspect of your fellowship. The most important component to superlative teaching is a strong grasp of the fundamentals of ultrasound. Your teaching experience will consist of both lecturing and hands-on teaching.
We will provide you with background information, literature reviews, and access to image and video clip databases to help you prepare lectures. We will also review your lectures and provide feedback in terms of quality and presentation style. You will receive ample hands-on scanning time with the emergency ultrasound faculty and this will prepare you for independent teaching.
Conference
The fellowship’s primary forum for didactics and education is Emergency Ultrasound Conference. This will occur on a weekly basis and consist of a full morning and/or afternoon session on a day to be determined. Your presence is required. One of the emergency ultrasound faculty will be present, as will any residents, students, or fellows who are on the emergency ultrasound rotation.
Research
Emergency ultrasound is at the cutting edge of clinical research in Emergency Medicine. Every day new applications that make an immediate impact on clinical practice are being studied and tested. Participation in research is an integral component of your fellowship training.
We will provide you with all the mentorship, resources, and support that you will need to pursue your research interests.
Administration
A keen understanding of the administrative aspects of emergency ultrasound is a necessity for successful implementation of an emergency ultrasound program in any emergency department. Administrative issues are primarily but not exclusively financial, medicolegal, or political in nature. We will do our best to ensure exposure and familiarity with each of these topics.
Quality Assurance
Interpreting and reviewing ultrasound images is as important as developing the skills to acquire them. To ensure that you are performing high-quality scans, all of your images and videos will be reviewed by the emergency ultrasound faculty. Both image quality and image interpretation will be reviewed and we refer to this as internal QA. In addition, there is external QA which compares your findings to findings reported on comprehensive ultrasounds or other consultative imaging studies. To further hone your skills and to prepare you for a director position of your own, you will review other clinicians’ ultrasound exams and give them direct feedback on their scans.
Image Management
As technology progresses, so does sophistication of ultrasound machines and their data management systems. With increased use of ultrasound in the emergency department, appropriate image storage and management has become more and more imperative.
International Ultrasound
The role of emergency ultrasound in the developing world is a rapidly emerging one. We encourage but do not require you to pursue international interests, and will assist you in coordinating such endeavors.