2024 Hong Kong SPECHO

Location: Hong Kong

Date: 24 November 2024

Fee*: AUD600 (early bird AUD500 before 24 September 2024, medical students 40% off)

Practical Intermediate Echocardiography for Critical Care

Spot Examination by Echo

Introduction

The half-day course provides training in transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) examination using handheld ultrasound device to paramedics, nurses, doctors and for those who may provide out-of-hospital life support in their lines of duties.

Echocardiography has been described as the 21^st century stethoscope.  With the advancement of technology, this notion is further realized by the appearance of handheld ultrasound devices.  Modern hand-held devices are ultra-portable, and possess functionalities that match their bigger counterparts.  The 2D image quality in some hand-held device are even comparable to some portable laptop type ultrasound system.  These little devices surpassed the traditional stethoscopes and are extremely helpful in emergency crisis (e.g. out of hospital arrest), or in daily practice (e.g.  ward-round).  As such, this SPECHO workshop provides an entry level on-the-spot TTE examination, using 1 to 2 TTE views, for frontline healthcare professionals who are confronted by emergency scenarios.  In these situations, often “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and SPECHO provides exactly that.

Objectives

After completion of the course, the participants should be able

• to perform a simple strategy for spot TTE examination
• to quickly identify:
  • Moderate to severe left ventricular dysfunction
  • Severe right ventricular (RV) dysfunction or strain due to pulmonary hypertension
  • Severe hypotension
  • Pericardial effusion/tamponade
• to understand the limitations of SPECHO
• to provide a quick and concise report

Course content

This is a 4 hour course, where ~2 to 2.5 h are devoted to hands-on session.  A ~1 h session on cases studies presents the most common scenarios encountered in emergency situations.

Who should attend?

This course is mainly designed for professionals who are required to handle medical emergency situations quickly.  They may include, but not limited to,

1. Paramedics (ambulance officers)
2. Nurses
3. Doctors who want to replace their stethoscopes with handheld devices in their daily practice.
4. Medical students
5. As the course mainly focuses on “pattern recognition”, professionals with little medical background, such as fire fighters and police, may also find the course useful.

Further information

Click here to download program and for further information.

*Important

1. All fees and payments are in Australian dollars (AUD).
2. There are limited places for medical students.  Medical students are entitled 40% off (you will need to show evidence, such as student ID card, on the day of the course).

Sponsor

This course is sponsored by Philips Health System (Hong Kong & Macau)