POCUS as part of the medical curriculum – is this the year?

Echocardiography allows real-time examination of cardiac function and structure. The information obtained includes diagnosing patient pathology, guiding clinical management, and monitoring treatment results. A detailed diagnostic echocardiography examination on a stable patient is usually performed during working hours by an echosonographer in the echocardiography suite. Given the available resources, it is however impractical to expect cardiologists to provide a reliable point-of-care (POC) transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) service at all hours.