Azrieli Students Train Physicians in POCUS

The Bar-Ilan University Azrieli Faculty of Medicine in Safed continues to initiate and create new partnerships with the local health care system, this time directly with local physicians.

After introducing BIU students to POCUS-Point of Care Ultrasound in the community (here) as part of the Faculty’s Covid-19 project (here) and training them in its clinical use, all made possible thanks to the generosity of The Russell Berrie Foundation, the Faculty has recently conducted training for local primary care physicians.

By way of reminder, in June the Faculty conducted training for 8 medical school students working in primary care clinics in the Nazareth area, on the use of POCUS in family medicine.  The workshop was conducted in the Clalit Health Services Nazareth Towers. The students were enamored by this technology, which complements the conventional physical exam skills they are taught in medical school. They continued their training in local emergency rooms with emergency care doctors of Safed, Nazareth, and Tiberias, learning, by examining the critically ill, the skills necessary to work with family physicians in the community.

On July 7, 2020 a workshop was held at the Holy Family Hospital in Nazareth in which the students, along with their emergency physician mentors, gave a hands-on POCUS workshop for family physicians. Dr. Bat Sheva Tzadok led the session, and Dr Mahmoud Atamleh trained. 

There was electricity in the air as family physicians learned from the students to diagnose acute heart failure, pneumonia, lung trauma, and more. Hadas, one of the students, was amazed at how naturally the family physicians took to the new instrument and technique, with an open mind and much motivation. Hadas and a local doctor eagerly planned how they would incorporate POCUS in evening rounds conducted at the local old age home. 

It was an incredible meeting, a merging of emergency doctors, family physicians, and medical students bridging the worlds of community medicine, frontline emergency physicians, and the Azrieli medical school - all with the common goal of advancing primary care in the Galilee