With POCUS handhelds now more readily available, there is an exciting opportunity toembrace the game changing benefits to patient outcomesin acute and urgent care environments beyond the emergency department.
Increased accessibility to POCUS technology comes with a sense of responsibility for ensuring that those with probes in their hands are adequately trained and supervised.
A group of passionate POCUS users lead by Dr Mick Kileen, FACEM and US Clinical Director at Whangarei Hospital in Northland New Zealand, teamed up with Philips in a partnership to meet this need for clinicians in remote or resource restricted environments.
The project was called The Handheld Collaboration.
Together they conducted a feasibility study on bringing safe, comprehensive and not for profit POCUS education and supervision to frontline doctors via distance learning and video interaction using Philips Lumify and Philips Reacts Telehealth platform.
The study ran over three months with 4 supervisors and 5 trainees each supplied with a Lumify and Reacts platform on loan from our friends at Philips.
The study provided Philips with objective insight to the use of the Lumify and Reacts platform is such a setting and provided EMUGs valuable insights to inform the design of future training and supervision pathways with benefits for our Developing Countries programs and beyond.
The trainees thoroughly enjoyed the use of their loaned Lumify pairing them with large screen phones or small tablets.They report that having the Lumify on them meant they scanned more often, resulting in a faster rate of skill development and logged scans and were able to use the probe for everything they would have otherwise use a standard machine for.