VanPOCUS - High Quality Ultrasound Education
VanPOCUS is a group of Vancouver-based ultrasound experts who are dedicated to providing high quality point of care ultrasound education at all levels of training and practice. From full year fellowships to single day conferences, VanPOCUS provides learning opportunities across a range of specialties and disciplines.
News - February 4, 2026
The fellowship had a great winter retreat in Whistler. Sampreeth Rao and Palig Balian had the chance to try out some of the green runs on the ski hill, and Geoff Ching spent the afternoon at the spa. There was good discussion on career counselling, wellness in medicine, and financial literacy at apres and dinner.
News - January 23, 2026
Congratulations to Sampreeth Rao, one of our current POCUS fellows, on his first POCUS publication! Point-of-care ultrasound in the modern era of emergency medicine was just published in the journal Current Opinion in Critical Care, and it offers a narrative review of the POCUS literature from the past 18 months.
News - September 20, 2025
Our former fellow Rukaiyah Lakkadghatwala came back to BC to give an excellent talk on POCUS for ocular emergencies at the St. Paul’s Emergency Medicine Update conference in Whistler.
News - July 22, 2025
Big congratulations to our former fellows Rukaiyah Lakkadghatwala and Alex Wilson for getting their fellowship research project across the line and published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine! They did a systematic review and meta-analysis of ultrasound guidance compared to anatomical landmark technique for thoracentesis and found that ultrasound guidance trended towards increased success rates and lower complication rates. Their paper is freely accessible as an open access publication.
News - July 3, 2025
VanPOCUS has a new publication in CJEM on using POCUS in pediatric resuscitation. This Just the Facts piece answers focused questions on how to integrate POCUS into your management of the critically ill child. It’s accompanied by an elegant infographic. If you see kids in the emergency department, make sure you read this paper.
News - June 24, 2025
The POCUS fellowship enjoyed a fun year-end event with our fellow Maryse Fagnant. We grabbed lunch at Tacofino and had a nice hike out to Quarry Rock in Deep Cove. Thanks to Melissa Skaugset, Justin Ahn, and Rahim Manji for coming out to see Maryse off!
News - April 11, 2025
The POCUS literature primer series continues with a paper focusing on the top 5 most influential papers on aorta POCUS and DVT POCUS. You can find this in the April issue of the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine. The 15-member expert panel used a modified Delphi process and 3 rounds of sequential surveys to create this shortlist.