Emergency Ultrasound Section: EUS-AAEM 2020-2021 Round Up

Alexis Salerno, MD FAAEM

Over the last few years, the EUS-AAEM Section of AAEM has become one of the largest member sections. The section was created with the objective of disseminating information about ultrasound amongst emergency medicine practitioners regardless of practice setting and experience.

One of our biggest accomplishments this year was the Unmute Your Probe virtual series. Since meeting in-person during the COVID pandemic was limited, many of us looked for other sources of continuing education and critical discussion. The Unmute Your Probe series was created in response to this. The EUS-AAEM sponsored didactic webinar series covers both basic and advanced POCUS topics and is taught by national speakers. Furthermore, members can obtain up to 22 hours of CME credits for webinar attendance. The Unmute Your Probe series has lectures scheduled until January 2022, so members still have time to participate if any prior lectures were missed.

As meeting restrictions began to lift, AAEM was able to hold a hybrid scientific assembly in St. Louis in June. During the main conference, the EUS-AAEM section coordinated three targeted ultrasound workshops. This was the first year offering these workshops. We covered upper and lower extremity regional anesthesia as well as an introduction to point of care echocardiogram. These workshops filled quickly with great attendance and was a success we hope to repeat in future years.

Post-conference, we also offered beginner and advanced ultrasound courses. As a supplement, we offered for the first time a Skills Verification Program (SVP). The SVP provided an opportunity for participants to obtain proctored FAST ultrasound exams with a signed record that can be used as part of the privileging/credentialing process at their individual institutions. There were six participants in the very first SVP and 11 EUS-AAEM ultrasound faculty were able to proctor a total of 95 FAST exams during the post-conference Ultrasound Courses. We look forward to the continuation of this program at future Scientific Assemblies and hope to expand our focus to include echocardiography, vascular access, and additional ultrasound skills useful to Emergency Physicians.

In February of 2020, we held our first regional course. Over the next year, we hope to renew our commitment to serving the community physician by holding regional courses throughout the year. We hope to add the Skills Verification Program to our regional courses, this would serve to help providers at local hospitals obtain scans for the privileging/credentialing process. If you are part of a regional AAEM chapter division and are interested in holding a regional ultrasound course, please let us know by email.

The EUS-AAEM section will also continue to publish our biannual section publication, The POCUS Report. Our summer edition was recently published in early July and we hope to have our winter edition published in late November. We encourage all members at different stages of medical education to submit articles for this publication as editors will work with potential authors to develop articles. In between editions, we hope to hold forums on our new MyAAEM community page listserv. This platform will be used to answer questions from our members and distribute information about important ultrasound news.

Lastly, we would like to send a big thank you to our outgoing board members: Dr. Chin, Dr. Burns, and Dr. Pounds for their contributions to the section and would like to welcome our newest board members Dr. Cohen, Dr. Newberry, and Dr. Eberle.