Why Wait for the “Echo” When You Can Do It Yourself?

Intensivists and emergency department physicians currently use hand-carried ultrasound echocardiography (HCUE) to make rapid point-of-care patient assessments. Hospitalists would also benefit from learning this skill, but how much HCUE training is required to become proficient? Researchers at a 500-bed teaching hospital in Chicago designed a brief HCUE training program to teach procedures for assessing six important cardiac abnormalities:

• Left ventricular (LV) systolic dysfunction

• Severe mitral regurgitation

• Moderate-to-severe left atrial enlargement

• Moderate-to-severe LV hypertrophy

• Medium-to-large pericardial effusion

• Dilated inferior vena cava

A hospitalist HCUE instructor (who learned image acquisition by performing 30 directly supervised stan…