News
May 12, 2023
Vancouver POCUS23 On Demand is now available! If you missed out on Vancouver POCUS23, you can still catch all the excellent talks by purchasing our on demand version of the symposium. Don’t miss out on Felipe Teran's fantastic presentation about the emerging use of TEE across emergency and critical care environments, as well as Justin Ahn and Dan Kim’s top 10 POCUS papers of 2022!
May 6, 2023
Vancouver POCUS23 was a great success! We had an excellent group of both in-person and on-line attendees, and the audience was treated to an incredibly educational slate of talks. The highlight of the morning was an excellent talk by Felipe Teran about his innovative work with resuscitative TEE. You can get a sense of what you may have missed out on by this Twitter thread of our top 10 POCUS papers from 2022. Keep an eye out for Vancouver POCUS23 On Demand which will be released soon!
April 30, 2023
One week countdown to Vancouver POCUS23 on Saturday May 6, 2023! If you are unable to join us in-person in Vancouver, you’ll have the option of joining us on-line! We will be live streaming the entire morning session. Plus, you’ll be able to access the recorded talks for the next year after the symposium.
Don’t miss out on our amazing faculty of local, national, and international experts! We're also delighted to have Dr. Felipe Teran, the founder of the Resuscitative TEE Project, join us as a special speaker.
April 26, 2023
Dan Kim worked with the CAEP Emergency Ultrasound Committee to provide research mentorship to University of Ottawa medical students Sacha Weill and Daniel Picard who took on incredible initiative and leadership to not only create a medical student-led POCUS conference but also published their recommendations into a paper that was published in the POCUS Journal today.
April 24, 2023
Gillian Sheppard from Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) invited Dan Kim to join MUN Emergency Medicine’s journal club as an expert to discuss VanPOCUS’s publication on the test characteristics of ultrasound for diagnosing peritonsillar abscess. Eric Macneill, one of the MUN residents, did a great job reviewing the paper, and the group enjoyed an excellent educational discussion after.
April 22, 2023
VanPOCUS ran its first Urgent and Primary Care POCUS Workshop at the Ridge Meadows UPCC. We had a great group of engaged and interested urgent care physicians and nurse practitioners. We’re looking forward to seeing how they implement their new POCUS skills into their clinical practice!
April 17, 2023
We are extremly excited at having our recent peritonsillar abscess publication featured on REBEL EM. Alanna Dompkowski, Melissa Hazlitt, and Marco Propersi from Vassar EM wrote a detailed review and critique of our paper. We’re thrilled our research has gained some traction in the FOAM space and hope it inspires future high quality POCUS research on the topic.
April 8, 2023
Our newest publication is a paper in Cureus where we employed a modified Delphi process with a 14-member expert panel recruited from the CAEP Emergency Ultrasound Committee and the Canadian Ultrasound Fellowship Collaborative. After completing 3 rounds of sequential surveys, we ultimately identified the top 5 most influential papers on renal POCUS and the top 5 most influential papers on biliary POCUS. This was national, collaborative effort is available as an open access publication.
March 22, 2023
Vancouver POCUS23 will be returning on Saturday May 6, 2023 as a hybrid conference: we will be meeting in-person, but for those of you who are unable to get to Vancouver, you’ll have the option of joining us virtually! We will be live streaming the entire morning session. Plus, you’ll be able to access the recorded talks for the next year after the symposium.
We're delighted to have Dr. Felipe Teran join us as a special speaker. Dr. Teran is an emergency physician at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, the founder of the Resuscitative TEE Project, and a leading expert in the emerging use of TEE across emergency and critical care environments.
February 16, 2023
Registration for the 4th annual Vancouver POCUS Symposium is now open! We will be returning on Saturday May 6, 2023 as an in-person conference for the first time in 3 years! The symposium will provide an update on the most recent trends in resuscitative, diagnostic, and clinical POCUS. You’ll be able to access the recorded talks for the next year after the symposium. We have an incredibly diverse and multi-specialty faculty of local, national, and international POCUS experts.
We're delighted to have Dr. Felipe Teran join us as a special speaker. Dr. Teran is an emergency physician at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, the founder of the Resuscitative TEE Project, and a leading expert in the emerging use of TEE across emergency and critical care environments.
We have also partnered with the Resuscitative TEE Workshop which will be running a course on Friday May 5, 2023.
February 15, 2023
Congratulations to our fellow Torey Lau on his first POCUS publication! He did a great job of summarizing the current state of the evidence with sonographic optic nerve assessment in emergency medicine. This narrative review on POCUS assessment of the optic nerve is freely available via open access in Life.
February 11, 2023
The UBC POCUS Fellowship had a successful Whistler retreat with fresh powder, good food, and great discussions about job planning, ultrasound leadership, and career longevity.
January 26, 2023
This POCUS resource document was recently published in CJEM to provide advice and guidance about best practices for clinical POCUS program management. It specifically highlights the role of the POCUS director, training and granting of POCUS privileges, elements of a quality assurance and improvement program, and ultrasound machine purchase and maintenance. The supplement includes an example business case for financial support of a POCUS program.
January 14, 2023
Save the date! Announcing the 4th annual Vancouver POCUS Symposium – it will return on Saturday May 6, 2023 as an in-person conference for the first time in 3 years! The symposium will provide an update on the most recent trends in resuscitative, diagnostic, and clinical POCUS. You’ll be able to access the recorded talks for the next year after the symposium.
We’re thrilled to have an amazing organizing committee: Katie Wiskar, Rahim Manji, and Ross Prager.
January 13, 2023
Our systematic review and meta-analysis of the test characteristics of ultrasound for peritonsillar abscess was finally published in Academic Emergency Medicine after a couple of years of work. This was a scholarly project by a couple of iterations of ultrasound fellows, including Justin Burton, Abdullah Hammad, and Jason Freder. We ultimately included 17 studies with 812 patients, 541 of whom had peritonsillar abscess. The pooled sensitivity of ultrasound was 86% and specificity was 76%, so highly sensitive but only moderately specific for peritonsillar abscess.
November 14, 2022
Rahim Manji generously hosted the UBC POCUS Fellowship's fall journal club. This journal club evening focused on biliary POCUS, and we reviewed two papers: Hilsden’s "Point of care biliary ultrasound in the emergency department (BUSED) predicts final surgical management decisions” in Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open and Zitek’s "The use of additional imaging studies after biliary point-of-care ultrasound in the emergency department” in Emergency Radiology. The take home is that biliary POCUS is highly accurate for cholelithiasis and is highly predictive of surgical decision making. However, this is only the case in systems where you have buy-in from your surgical colleagues and where you have image archiving so all members of the treating team can review the point of care imaging.
October 13, 2022
VanPOCUS’s Dan Kim was part of an international effort led by Bob Jarman, Anna Colclough, and Cian McDermott to provide recommendations on commonly used heart and lung POCUS applications, including the assignment of levels of evidence (LoE) and grading of the recommendations (using the GRADE framework). These clinical practice guidelines were supported by the European Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (EFSUMB).
October 7, 2022
The latest VanPOCUS publication is a new paper in Cureus where we used a modified Delphi method to identify the top 5 most influential papers on FAST and E-FAST. This was a national collaborative effort, and best of all, the paper is open access and freely available to all!
September 19, 2022
The UBC POCUS fellowship kicked off the new academic year with our new fellow Torey Lau. Torey impressed us with his disc golf skills - hopefully his ultrasound skills are even better! Torey joins us after completing his CCFP-EM training at UBC’s St. Paul’s site.
September 13, 2022
VanPOCUS’s Dan Kim spoke about “POCUS in the ER” today at UBC Radiology’s Vancouver Imaging Review (VIR) 2022. It was a great opportunity to discuss the clinical impactfulness of POCUS with radiologists who may not have the perspective of the clinician at the bedside. A summary of the take home points from this talk can be found here.
July 6, 2022
A new academic year means reprising the R1 POCUS FUNdamentals workshop and welcoming a new group of R1s to the program. We had an awesome group of instructors, including Melissa Skaugset, Karine Badra, Zafrina Poonja, new POCUS fellow Torey Lau, and UBC emergency medicine residents Kate Eppler and Matt Douglas-Vail.
June 28, 2022
Congratulations to our graduating POCUS fellows, Nik Humniski and Justin Burton! Regrettably, Justin Burton was unable to attend due to illness, but we celebrated with Nik Humniski at CRAFT English Bay. We’re delighted that both of our fellows will be sticking around the lower mainland. Nik will be the new ultrasound director for the Richmond Hospital emergency medicine group, and Justin is joining the Langley Memorial Hospital emergency medicine group. Wishing our fellows all the best with their future endeavors!
June 26, 2022
VanPOCUS held the first iteration of the CRASH course this past weeked - Cardio Respiratory and Abdominal Sonography for Hospitalists. We had a great group of attendees, including hospitalists from Vancouver General Hospital, Royal Columbian Hospital, Eagle Ridge Hospital, and even as far away as Mackenzie Hospital in Northern BC! We were joined by an excellent group of instructors, including our fellow Nik Humniski, Rahim Manji, and Maja Stachura.
June 13, 2022
The May edition of the ACEP-SAEM “Probing the Literature” Ultrasound Journal Club reviewed Dan Kim's 2019 paper from Academic Emergency Medicine, "Test Characteristics of Point-of-care Ultrasound for the Diagnosis of Retinal Detachment in the Emergency Department”. If you missed it, you can catch all the lively discussion on the ACEP Emergency Ultrasound Section YouTube channel.
May 16, 2022
Dan Kim chaired a track on “POCUS in Resuscitation" at the annual CAEP 2022 conference today in Quebec City. Speakers included Tom Jelic, Frank Myslik, Laurie Robichaud, and Elizabeth Lalande. If you missed it, you can find a Twitter thread on the talk “5 POCUS Resuscitation Papers You Should Know”.
May 16, 2022
VanPOCUS’s Dan Kim was the invited guest speaker at this month’s ACEP-SAEM “Probing the Literature” Ultrasound Journal Club. He presented his 2019 paper from Academic Emergency Medicine, "Test Characteristics of Point-of-care Ultrasound for the Diagnosis of Retinal Detachment in the Emergency Department”. There was excellent discussion, and if you missed it, you’ll be able to catch it on the ACEP Emergency Ultrasound Section YouTube channel soon.
May 11, 2022
The 3rd annual Vancouver Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) Symposium took place on Saturday May 7, 2022 as a virtual conference. We had over 150 participants join us as our amazing faculty provided an update on the most recent trends in resuscitative, diagnostic, and clinical POCUS. Iff you missed registration and missed the conference altogether, you can now purchase Vancouver POCUS22 On Demand!
May 6, 2022
You still have time to register for Vancouver POCUS 2022! Join us tomorrow morning for an update on the most recent trends in resuscitative, diagnostic, and clinical POCUS. If you can’t join tomorrow morning, you’ll be able to access recorded versions of all the talks for the next year. Ross Prager will be back again as our host, and we have an incredible group of speakers, including Katie Wiskar, Kevin Ong, Matthew White, Tracy Morton, Lauren Arthurs, Rahim Manji, Ken Kaila, Ross Prager, Shane Arishenkoff, Virginia Robinson, Karine Badra, and Justin Ahn.
May 4, 2022
We’re delighted to announce that the UBC DEM POCUS Fellowship has received official accreditation from the Royal College as an Area of Focused Competence Program (AFC) in Acute Point of Care Ultrasonography. AFCs are areas of specialty medicine addressing a societal and patient population need that was previously unmet by traditional systems of primary and subspecialty disciplines. As POCUS is a relatively young subspecialty area, the AFC helps to establish national standards for training and specialist competence and provides fellows who complete an AFC program with credentials that are nationally and internationally recognized. More information about AFCs can be found on the Royal College website.
May 2, 2022
Less than 1 week until Vancouver POCUS 2022! Join us virtually on Saturday May 7, 2022 for an update on the most recent trends in resuscitative, diagnostic, and clinical POCUS. Go to the symposium page for the agenda and to register. As a preview of what to expect, check out Kevin Ong’s talk on ultrasound guided pericardiocentesis from last year’s Vancouver POCUS Symposium.
April 13, 2022
Check out the newest issue (April 2022) of the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine for 2 VanPOCUS publications:
-Point of care ultrasound training in Canadian emergency medicine residency programs
-A picture is worth a thousand words, but only if you can see it
March 19, 2022
Letter just published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery addressing a highly flawed study on the use of ultrasound in traumatic pneumothorax. The study in question retrospectively found a sensitivity of ultrasound for traumatic pneumothorax far lower than the current published literature on the subject. We highlight many methodologic issues with their study design that limit the applicability of their conclusions.
March 11, 2022
VanPOCUS’s Dan Kim spoke at UBC CPD’s Rural POCUS Rounds on ultrasound guided arthrocentesis. It was a well attended virtual session with great discussion after. You can catch a recording of the talk for free on the UBC CPD website. The CJEM Just the Facts paper on ultrasound guided arthrocentesis is an excellent accompaniment to this talk.
March 3, 2022
A new paper in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine provides the most complete and current description of POCUS training in Canadian emergency medicine residency programs. Former fellow David Smith is amongst the authors. We demonstrate that POCUS training in Canadian emergency medicine programs is prevalent, but there is variability in support for POCUS leads, delivery of training, determination of proficiency, and presence of quality assurance.
February 2, 2022
Registration is now open for Vancouver POCUS 2022! Join us virtually on Saturday May 7, 2022 for an update on the most recent trends in resuscitative, diagnostic, and clinical POCUS. If you can’t join on the day of, you’ll be able to access recorded versions of all the talks for the next year. Agenda for the symposium can be found on the symposium page.
January 25, 2022
Announcing the 3rd annual Vancouver POCUS Symposium! It will take place on Saturday May 7, 2022 as a virtual conference. The symposium will provide an update on the most recent trends in resuscitative, diagnostic, and clinical POCUS. You can catch it all from the comfort of your own home, and you’ll be able to access recorded versions of all the talks for the next year.
We’re thrilled to have an amazing organizing committee: Katie Wiskar, Ross Prager, Tracy Morton, and Ken Kaila.
January 3, 2022
Our Just the Facts paper on ultrasound guided arthrocentesis made it to number 3 on the top 5 papers in CJEM in 2021 based on Almetric scores. Congratulations to lead author Zafrina Poonja!
November 23, 2021
Former fellow Neil Long has published another ultrasound case report, this time in the POCUS Journal. This case highlights the adjunctive utility of POCUS to diagnose a large thigh hematoma causing compartment syndrome of the thigh.
November 19, 2021
A letter to the editor in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine calling for Canadian healthcare systems to invest more resources in digital archiving systems for POCUS. As we say, “there needs to be advocacy for hospitals to provide appropriate IT funding and resources to implement digital archiving systems, and alternate avenues such as the crowdsourcing of low-cost workflow solutions needs to be explored”.
November 3, 2021
VanPOCUS’s Dan Kim moderated a POCUS-focused Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) National Grand Rounds session on November 3rd. He was joined by a fantastic panel of speakers: Gillian Sheppard spoke about ocular ultrasound, Colin Bell described the PENG and ESP blocks and their indications in the emergency department, and Talia Burwash-Brennan reviewed the ultrasound-guided approach to musculoskeletal complaints. If you missed these rounds, you can watch a recording on CAEP’s website.
October 25, 2021
Neil Long, one of our former fellows, published a unique case of hemorrhagic cholecystitis identified on point of care ultrasound in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. It’s freely accessible as a “Clinical Images” case, so access the paper to learn more about this uncommon diagnosis.
October 9, 2021
We kicked off the new fellowship year by having our fellows, Justin Burton (left) and Nik Humniski (model), teach in the annual UBC Medical Student Ultrasound Symposium. There was enthusiastic turnout from members of the UBC Ultrasound Club, and we had teaching help from Tracy Morton (POCUS lead for the Rural Coordination Centre of BC) and Xin Liu (one of the R3 UBC emergency medicine residents).
September 1, 2021
Matthew Douglas-Vail, one of the R4 UBC emergency medicine residents, just published this case report of a clot in transit in the Visual Journal of Emergency Medicine. His point of care echo images are impressive!
August 4, 2021
Our recent fellowship grad, Zafrina Poonja, just had this CJEM “Just the Facts” paper published on ultrasound guided arthrocentesis. It provides a concise review of the rationale for using ultrasound guidance and describes the technique. It is accompanied by this handy infographic you can refer to at the bedside.
August 1, 2021
Riley Golby, one of the R5 UBC emergency medicine residents, just published this Annals of Emergency Medicine “Images” case of a patient with ischemic ventricular septal rupture. It’s freely available as an open access article, so check it out!
July 26, 2021
We brought the old ultrasound crew back together again to run the R1 POCUS FUNdamentals workshop. Thanks to former fellows Tommy Merth, Jen Chao, and Abdullah Hammad for providing excellent bedside instruction!
July 23, 2021
Former fellow Véronique Dion published her first 1st-author study in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. We performed a prospective observational study of 20 PEM physicians examining 71 children aged 4 to 10 years old. We compared the PEM physician’s identification of the distal fibular physis based on physical exam compared to the position of the distal fibular physis on ultrasound (the criterion standard). Their ability to identify the distal fibular physis by physical exam was poor - only 34%. This should call into question the diagnosis of Salter-Harris type 1 fractures.
July 1, 2021
VanPOCUS’s Dan Kim is the new chair of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) Emergency Ultrasound Committee (EUC). The CAEP EUC aims to promote emergency POCUS in Canada, especially in the domains of education, clinical practice, and research. To learn more, check out the CAEP EUC website If you want to connect with us, email us at caepeuc@gmail.com or communicate with us via Twitter @CAEP_EUC.
June 29, 2021
The UBC POCUS Fellowship wrapped up the academic year in style with some competitive 5-pin bowling. Zafrina Poonja is sticking around Vancouver and will take on a position as VGH ED ultrasound co-director. Abdullah Hammad is going back to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Jason Freder is returning to Montreal to work at St. Mary’s Hospital and has taken on a POCUS medical student education position at McGill. And David Smith is moving to Victoria. Wishing our fellows all the best with their future endeavors!
May 18, 2021
Vancouver POCUS21 is now on demand! Did you miss the conference and miss out on registration? You now have the opportunity to purchase Vancouver POCUS21 On Demand here.
May 14, 2021
EM:RAP’s Emergency Medical Abstracts reviewed our cricothyroid membrane landmarking paper in their most recent May 2021 issue. Despite the reviewer’s concerns about the limitations of the study (single center, patients did not need airway management), they liked the take home point that the position of the cricothyroid membrane moves with a change in the patient’s position.
May 9, 2021
We had an amazing Virtual Vancouver POCUS21 Symposium yesterday morning. The “king of puns” Ross Prager did a phenomenal job of moderating, and we had fantastic talks from all our speakers. Thank you to everyone who joined us, and if you registered but were unable to join us live yesterday morning, the videos will be made available to you shortly. If you missed out all together, here’s a brief review of the "Top 10 POCUS Papers of 2020” talk.
April 23, 2021
A new CJEM Just the Facts publication about the role of POCUS for skin and soft tissue infections specifically cellulitis, abscess, and necrotizing fasciitis. It provides guidance about how to perform the scan, as well as how POCUS can be used to assist with incision and drainage of abscesses.
April 16, 2021
VanPOCUS’s Dan Kim will be speaking at SaskSono21 on Saturday, April 17, 2021 about continuing medical education in POCUS, as well as facilitating workshops on how to give a good POCUS lecture and how to run a scanning course/ultrasound boot camp. If you haven’t yet registered, it’s not too late: https://cmelearning.usask.ca/current-courses/sasksono_21.php.
March 30, 2021
VanPOCUS’s Dan Kim was part of the team behind this new meta-research study of systematic reviews assessing the diagnostic accuracy of POCUS applications published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine. This study attempted to characterize the completeness of reporting using the PRISMA-DTA checklist. Overall, systematic reviews of POCUS diagnostic accuracy were moderately reported, but the main areas of deficiency were systematic review registration and the identification of a minimally acceptable test accuracy threshold.
February 8, 2021
We’re thrilled that Life in the Fastlane (LITFL) is advertising Virtual Vancouver POCUS21, and we’re super excited to have LITFL’s Neil Long joining our excellent line up of speakers.
January 21, 2021
Save the date! The 2nd annual Vancouver Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) Symposium will be coming back as a virtual conference. The symposium will provide an update on the most recent trends in resuscitative, diagnostic, and procedural POCUS and will feature a panel discussion on POCUS and standard of care with experts from anesthesia, critical care, emergency medicine, and internal medicine.
January 4, 2021
The Imaging Wire recently summarized the POCUS community’s dissatisfaction with the European Society of Pediatric Radiology’s recently published position statement on POCUS This was prompted by a tweet from VanPOCUS’s Dan Kim, categorically rejecting the idea of a radiology society imposing its control over an imaging modality that is used by clinicians from across all specialties in medicine.
October 26, 2020
VanPOCUS is presenting a virtual poster at ACEP20 If you’re registered for the conference, check it out - abstract #349: "The Physical Examination is Unreliable in Determining the Location of the Ankle Physis in Healthy Children”. The full abstract is available in the November supplement of Annals of Emergency Medicine.
October 7, 2020
A new publication from the VanPOCUS group where we assessed the change in the position of the cricothyroid membrane ultrasound landmark from 0° head of bed elevation to 30° and 90°. Check out the full manuscript in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia.
September 16, 2020
VanPOCUS ran the UBC R1 ultrasound course in a physically distanced manner, given the current COVID-19 pandemic. The R1 cohort had to be separated into smaller groups and had to act as their own models. We had help from former fellow Neil Long and current fellow Zafrina Poonja.
September 2, 2020
Neil Long and Justin Ahn are featured in a video by the Burnaby Hospital and the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundations where they describe their participation in Microsoft Philanthropies’ Hack for Good program. They have partnered with Microsoft’s team to develop a low cost pericardiocentesis trainer, using 3D printing and cheap, easily accesible materials like gelatine and balloons.
April 9, 2020
The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) Emergency Ultrasound Committee has published recommendations on the use of POCUS in the management of patients with suspected COVID-19. Key recomendations focus on the clinical indications for using POCUS, typical lung ultrasound findings, infection control strategies, and a protocol for safely cleaning an ultrasound machine. Check out the full manuscript in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine.
March 13, 2020
Given the current situation with COVID-19 and recommendations from Vancouver Coastal Health about cancelling all non-essential group meetings and events, the organizing committee has made the decision to cancel our April 18th Vancouver POCUS Symposium and to postpone the event to the fall. This is in keeping with both health authority and provincial recommendations, and at the end of the day, we believe this is the right thing to do. While we're disappointed about this, we hope that all of you will be able to join us for a rescheduled symposium in the fall.
March 4, 2020
Our fellow Neil Long has worked with Life in the Fastlane to get our VanPOCUS video tutorials on to the Life in the Fastlane blog! Check it out at: https://litfl.com/ultrasound-library/vancouver-pocus/