We are seeking to build a sustainable point of care ultrasound (POCUS) program at a large referral children's hospital in Santo Domingo, DR. Doctors at this hospital have identified the need for this in-person teaching to allow them to better use machines they have to serve the variety of high-acuity patients presenting for care. This trip is part of a larger longitudinal project including bidirectional exchange to thoughtfully empower clinicians in the DR to take on POCUS leadership roles over time. They have noted that in-person learning as they develop this program would be most useful, so I will travel as part of a team of POCUS-trained pediatric ER doctors to provide hands on teaching. We know that POCUS use improves timely diagnosis and care of patients, especially in settings where otherwise urgent imaging capacity is limited. Improving POCUS capacity is in line with locally-developed goals and serves to directly benefit the ill and injured children from DR and Haiti that are served at this hospital.
This project serves to directly benefit the children who are cared for at Robert Reid Cabral Children's Hospital (RRCCH) in Santo Domingo - especially in the emergency department and pediatric intensive care unit. RRCCH is the nation's largest referral children's hospital, serving the sickest and most injured kids both from Santo Domingo and those who are referred from other health centers in the DR and in nearby Haiti. By building local capacity to perform bedside point of care ultrasound, we anticipate that local clinicians and POCUS champions will be able to provide timely, life-saving care to these children. With a heavy emphasis on capacity building and sustainability, this project will hopefully continue to benefit the children in the DR for many months/years after this trip concludes.
We are fortunate that this trip is within the context of a larger, ongoing partnership between our US based institutions and RRCCH. Therefore, we expect that this in-person training will be a significant step in empowering local champions to act as on-site POCUS leaders to promote the growth of their POCUS project over time. Furthermore, we will continue hosting virtual training sessions at a distance to ensure that the benefits of the trip are long-lasting.
Thank you so very much for making this trip possible. By visiting this partner site in person, we were able to significantly build on prior efforts to bolster POCUS capacity. We conducted workshops on vascular access using the ultrasound (which has been a key skill physicians there have asked for), taught new skills like advanced ultrasound applications to identify kids at high risk for poor cardiac function, and assisted in bedside scans to immediately apply what they'd been taught and highlight the incredible utility of POCUS use for their complex patient population. We expanded our reach of learners, so our groups included pediatricians, ICU doctors, ER doctors, anesthesiologists, and surgeons. They reported "we've caught the pocus bug!" and since returning we've already seen evidence of increasing and more proficient pocus use in the scans they've been performing. This trip was very valuable for this partnership, the clinicians in the DR, and their patients. Thank you very much again for making it possible.
