For the ninth time, the University of Iowa has hosted the Midwest Critical Care Fellows Ultrasound Symposium, a two-day conference that brings first-year pulmonary and critical care fellows and faculty from institutions across the region and beyond to Iowa City. This year, a record-setting 108 fellows came from 14 academic medical centers to spend two days learning both the benefits of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) and how to employ POCUS on their own in clinical work.

Though the symposium ran at other institutions in its first couple of years, its status as a Hawkeye-led production has long-since been cemented, now that a full decade is approaching. The basic mission and curriculum have stayed consistent, to provide trainees a grounding, no matter their past experience, in how to obtain and interpret essential information about patients at the bedside. As is demonstrated in countless ways over the two-day sessions, POCUS becomes a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled critical care clinician. Faculty presenters regularly display peer-reviewed data demonstrating its high diagnostic efficacy compared to other imaging modalities.

The curriculum’s structure is a mix of didactic lecture on everything from transducer wand manipulation to what to prioritize when time is short, of practice in image identification, and of actual hands-on work imaging volunteers. In each setting, the fellows are led by one of the dozens of faculty members from many of the same institutions the trainees call home. By the end of the two days, each fellow has been exposed to a variety of imaging situations, whether it is a thrombosis in a leg or a fluttering valve in an aorta. And they return home to their clinics, wards, and intensive care units ready to build on what they have learned.

Congratulations to the organizers, course director Paul Nassar, MD, MPH, and program associate Nicole Strand. And thanks to the many members of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine for providing support and assistance in delivering another successful event.