Survey on Cardiologists' Perspectives on Cardiac Point-of-Care Ultrasounds (POCUS)

• Main Authors: Linda Liu (Author), Christine Chow (Author), Cooper Kersey (Author), Brandon Wiley (Author), Jonathan Lindner (Author), Andrew Pattock (Author), Carlos Alviar (Author), Sula Mazimba (Author), Yoonsik Cho (Author), Kavita Khaira (Author), James Kirkpatrick (Author), Younghoon Kwon (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: CINQUILL Medical Publishers Inc., 2024-11-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.
• Notes: 10.24908/pocus.v9i2.17258; 2369-8543
• Keywords: point-of-care ultrasound; cardiology; perspectives; pocus; Internal medicine; RC31-1245; Medical technology; R855-855.5
• Source: POCUS Journal, Vol 9, Iss 2 (2024)

Introduction: Cardiac point of care ultrasound (POCUS) has been used with increasing frequency. As a result of this trend, this study sought to characterize cardiologists' perspectives on cardiac POCUS. Methods: An 18-question survey on demographics, cardiac POCUS clinical practice, education, and infrastructure was distributed by 16 academic medical centers. Likert scale responses were categorized into three groups: 1) "strongly agree" or "agree" 2) "strongly disagree" and "disagree" and 3) "neutral." Results: Of the 140 survey responses collected from January to September 2021, 41% of respondents used cardiac POCUS more than twice in an inpatient week. Seventy-one percent of cardiologists believed that cardiac POCUS should be integrated more regularly into clinical practice and into cardiology fellowship education. Less than half of respondents (44%) reported easy access to POCUS devices, and more than half of respondents (56%) did not think there was appropriate institutional infrastructure to easily upload and document cardiac POCUS images (56%). Conclusions: Academic cardiologists had varying opinions on the use and impact of cardiac POCUS. However, most cardiologists believed that cardiac POCUS should be more incorporated within practice despite persisting infrastructure barriers.