1. Tell us a little about your professional journey. Where do you work, and what is your current role?

During the week I’m an SRMO in Critical Care on the beautiful Central Coast in NSW. On the side I work as a match day doctor for the A League and NRL, and do some policy and research work in emergency and prehospital care.

2. How did you first discover POCUS, and what sparked your interest in it?

I was a true child of the FOAMed era and fell in love with POCUS during a stint doing obstetric screening in rural Nepal; screening for placenta previa soon turned into using Lung Ultrasound, finding rheumatic heart disease, and detecting hydronephrosis with the old ivory coloured Sonosite S-180. I was one of the first group of paramedics in australia to research and teach POCUS, and I just adored how it enhanced my ability to care for patients in a prehospital setting with limited information.

3. How did you become involved with EMUGs, and what has this involvement meant to you personally and professionally?

I was lucky to attend one of the first EMUGs meetings early on in a bar when Chris Partyka and Brian O’Connel brought the community together to start what would become EMUGs today. As a paramedic at the time I was thrilled to feel welcomed in an organisation that was focussed on pragmatic patient care, and after some time overseas and away, became more involved again instructing for EGLS and then joined the board.

4. What is it about POCUS that continues to excite and inspire you?

I love that it offers diagnostic clarity and forces us to connect with our patients. Its portability and safety means that we can take POCUS to patients in even the most austere contexts; allowing us to shift the locus of care. I’m obviously a POCUS proselytiser, I owe much of my career and best clinical moments to POCUS.

5. Perhaps share a memorable patient story or clinical moment where POCUS made a meaningful difference or changed your practice?

Some of the most enjoyable and meaningful teaching I do is in Western Fiji. The burden of disease and severity thereof is just orders of magnitude greater than we see in much of australia, and our pasifika brothers and sisters live just next door to us. Seeing the power of POCUS to be a cost effective means of improving Clincial decision making and care of sick patients in the hands of my talented and skilled colleagues is a joy.

Watching someone go from never having touched a probe in the morning, to performing a RUSH scan on a patient with tamponade that afternoon and diagnosing obstructive shock, then draining that same effusion; that’s the real rush.

6. What are your hopes and vision for EMUGs in Australia and NZ?

I really hope EMUGS is able to continue to serve as a facilitator for the meeting of our community to practice (POCUS users in emergency and resuscitative settings) and that it continues to support the community in coming together, collaborating with each other, and improving patient care.

7. What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

Aside from the usual (hiking, travelling, reading, sleeping) I’m really lucky to volunteer with an amazing group of people at CHS - a community first responder charity in Sydney.

8. What is your favourite travel destination, and why?

Impossible question - my next destination is my favourite one!

9. What is one item you never travel without?

I’m probably supposed to say a handheld ultrasound probe aren’t I?

No. The answer is hand sanitizer. And a sharpie. And a portable power pack.

10. What is one book or podcast you’d recommend to fellow clinicians?

Video/Podcast:

The Human Factor - by Sidney Dekker. His work on safety sciences, human factors, and restorative justice has been transformative for my thinking.

Book:

An astronaut’s guide to life on earth by Chris Hadfield the commander of the international space station. It’s a short but powerful read that’s packed full of great stories, it makes easy but throughly provoking reading with great lessons for life.