A small group of Pediatric attendings and residents from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have partnered with physicians at Robert Reid Cabral (RRC) Hospital in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic to provide point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) teaching. The partnership has been ongoing for the past two years and this trip will consist of three days of teaching with didactic lectures and hands-on scanning sessions for a diverse group of pediatric emergency medicine and PICU providers (attendings, fellows, residents and medical students) interested in improving their POCUS skills to better serve their pediatric patients.
RRC is the largest pediatric tertiary care hospital and referral center for the country and serves a mixed Dominican and Haitian population. It has a dedicated pediatric emergency department, pediatric intensive care unit and a broad array of pediatric specialty services. Our hope is that our colleagues at RRC will be able to incorporate the POCUS skills taught during our sessions into their clinical practice to better serve their patients.
Our goal is to not only foster POCUS skills in our colleagues in the DR so that they can incorporate this safe, easily accessible, and timely tool into their practice but also to continue to build on our bidirectional partnership. Over the past two years, the CHOP team has visited the DR every 6 months and has also hosted providers from RRC for POCUS conferences in Philadelphia. Between trips, we are in regular communication with RRC providers and share interesting POCUS cases.
We were joined by a large group of residents and attendings in pediatric emergency medicine, pediatric intensive care, pulmonology, anesthesia, and general surgery. Over two days, they learned about multiple uses of POCUS and were able to participate in hands on practice. These new skills will help them provide excellent patient care. For example, following a session on ultrasound-guided central access, a PICU fellow was able to apply these skills by placing an ultrasound-guided IJ on a patient in the PICU.
