Oh, the Places You'll Go: System-Wide Point of Care Ultrasound

Zach Soucy DO, FACEP (Dartmouth Health)
Svetlana Zakharchenko DO, FACEP, ARDMS (Palisades Medical Center)

Hello ACEP US Section...

Are you incessantly getting asked by other specialties to help them set up the well-oiled machine that is your EM POCUS program? Hospital administrators asking how the ED built an accountable and sustainable ED US program? Do you see the need for institutional POCUS leadership at your hospital but do not know where to start?

We do! Look no further than the ACEP System-Wide Clinical Ultrasound (SWCUS) subcommittee. Our committee sees the incredible value POCUS brings to patient care in the ED and beyond. No other technology and skill traverses such broad clinical, operational, and administrative hospital entities. We are committed to helping our institutions navigate these complex and often unexplored relationships. To do this to the best of our specialty’s ability, our committee need YOUR ideas, YOUR problem-solving attitude, and YOUR passion for responsibly advancing POCUS beyond the confines of our departments. Please consider sharing your expertise and taking on these challenges together by joining the SWCUS subcommittee.

Recent Happenings

During the ACEP22 pre-conference Emergency Ultrasound Management Course, we had a high turn-out of interested clinicians in our SWCUS break-out session. Our topics of discussion included community hospital committee development, getting started and bridge building, and proving institutional value. As POCUS is increasingly utilized by a variety of specialties, emergency physicians are increasingly asked to step up to the leadership forefront in implementing POCUS infrastructure. There is increasing demand by hospital network administrators to institute a sophisticated approach to safely, sustainably, and compliantly deploy POCUS performed by clinicians beyond the ED. The subcommittee provides SWCUS resources to the ACEP EUS community and is dedicated to support anyone starting a system-wide program, expanding their efforts, or experiencing challenges achieving their goals.

Over the last few years, the subcommittee led by Rob Strony, Zach Soucy, and Amie Woods developed a specialty agnostic website designed to serve as an intradisciplinary platform to centralize various resources including published guidelines, supportive literature, and policies and guidelines for all clinicians working on SWCUS. There is also a website chat function with a bulletin board to facilitate crowdsourcing Q&A. Recently, the ACEP Industry Round Table subcommittee (IRT) published excellent workflow resources which are linked to the pocusalliance.com website. We have also regularly conducted townhall meetings that have brought together ACEP, SAEM and AAEM members discussing key issues of SWUS implementation.

Major Aims

Our subcommittee has an ambitious agenda for 2023.

1. More Inclusive Membership: we hope to recruit diverse, fresh, passionate emergency physicians to help identify new emerging barriers and participate in solving problems—new and old alike. PLEASE include us in your SWCUS journey!
2. Broaden Collaboration: a major aim of ours this year is to work collaboratively with multiple subcommittees to broaden perspective and increase website resources.
3. Publish: we hope our members will find common ground and use the committee as a think tank for research ideas and collaboration. We have one joint publication nearly ready for journal submission and hope this is the first of many!
4. Increase Resources: the website has many planned improvements so check back frequently or chat with us if you want something specific. We are sure others have the same questions.
5. Early Summer Townhall: a lot has changed since the last town hall so we plan on organizing another. We need you to focus us on issues important to you.
6. Leadership: we want to help our members become expert in this area and in time pay it forward by leading our subcommittee to greater heights.

We are excited to share SWCUS information relevant to you in future ACEP newsletters. Please feel free to contact us via email, chat us up on the website, and join the subcommittee!