.png)
In September 2024, our new pilot Paediatric Emergency point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) course started in Kumasi, Ghana. This course has been developed by Worldwide Radiology and The School of Health and Society of the University of Salford, UK, in partnership with the Department of Child Health at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and the Department of Medical Imaging at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
The course is designed to enhance the bedside diagnostic capability of doctors providing paediatric emergency care in Ghana.
Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has the potential to improve the immediate diagnosis and care of patients in low resource settings when used by competent operators.
Since 2021, Worldwide Radiology has been delivering a POCUS training programme for Adult Emergency and General Medicine physicians in Ghana, including a train-the-trainer component, together with our partners at Salford University in the UK. It is hosted by the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ho.
As a result, POCUS training capacity in Ghana has been building and the courses are now run almost entirely by our Ghanaian colleagues.
Following the success of this training for adult patients, the Head of the Paediatric Emergency Unit at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi expressed an interest in developing a similar training partnership, aimed at doctors who work regularly with children.
The paediatric course curriculum includes theory about the principles of good practice, physics and the use of equipment. The hands-on scanning includes FAST (a quick scan technique for patients who have had a trauma), chest (lung & heart), abdominal and neonatal emergencies. It also includes how ultrasound can help inserting cannulas.
Online pre-course learning is combined with two blocks of face-to-face teaching and remote online supervision. Certification is quality assured by the University of Salford and Worldwide Radiology volunteers contribute to learning materials and hands on teaching.
Nine doctors from various hospitals in Ghana have enrolled on the pilot course. They completed their first block of online learning in October and the first week of face-to-face practice in November. They are now back at their own hospitals, with remote supervision from the trainer team, until the next teaching block coming up in 2025.
The programme so far has been well received. Feedback suggests that the learning is what they need for their patients and that the scanning time with expert trainers is important. They have told us that they expect that POCUS will have a very positive impact on their clinical practice and patients.
Dr Sandra Kwarteng Owusu, Paediatric Pulmonologist at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital presenting research she carried out with her team. They explored how lung POCUS compared with chest X-rays for children with pneumonia. It sparked a great discussion amongst candidates about the use of POCUS in this and similar contexts.
As expected, there have been several challenges and the team delivering the programme are constantly having to adapt to overcome these challenges during this pilot year. Some participants find it difficult to have time away from their clinical duties to participate in all parts of the programme.
During the face-to-face course delivery, healthy children are in school, and it is therefore not possible to recruit them to act as ultrasound models for practice. Also, the number of ultrasound devices available limits the scanning time of the candidates.
The team would like to source more devices for the next face-to-face teaching block. Ongoing feedback will be sought as we work through this first year to inform future iterations of the course.
The GE Healthcare Team in Ghana kindly sponsored our 2024 courses with one cart based model in Ho and two VScan Air handheld ultrasound probes. This has greatly helped the team provide the hands-on training, both in the skills lab and on hospital wards.
Comments