SAM and ICS COVID19 POCUS service evaluation

The Society for Acute Medicine and Intensive Care Society have launched a national service evaluation to understand the role of POCUS in the care of patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19. This data will be vital to help establish the utility of POCUS in the care of these patients, from the front door through to the Intensive Care Unit.

We are inviting all practitioners across the country who undertake POCUS as part of their routine work to participate, by completing a standard dataset (taking approximately one minute for core lung ultrasound data). There are options for detailed 12- and 14 point lung scans, and basic and advanced echocardiography – considered mandatory for patients admitted to intensive care units.

If you and/or your unit is interested in taking part, please register with your respective administrator:

Full details of the project proposal and unit protocol (explanation notes for units considering taking part) are available below. Once registered, your details will be passed to the team managing the database at the University of Birmingham who will send you login details for REDCap – the encrypted database system. These login details will be unique to your unit and allow you to add, edit and review data from your unit throughout the process. You are free to use this local data to help evaluate and improve your services. Instructions for how to use the database will be sent to you at the same time.

We recommend participating units inform their local Caldicott Guardian of their participation in this evaluation, although no patient identifiable information will be stored on either local or national databases (pdf and Word versions of Caldicott approval forms). We also recommend registering this as a service evaluation with your Trust Audit Department.

Further information and useful documents are below:

The evaluation proposal can be found here

The latest version of the dataset can be found here (word version here). Explanatory notes are available here

Unit protocol (instructions for each Unit) is available here

A Master list is available here (pdf and Word)

 

If you have any questions about this service evaluation, please direct them to the respective administrators above.

 

Nick Smallwood for the FAMUS committee

Prashant Parulekar for the FUSIC committee