Denver Health Medical Center

4 year EM residency at a Level 1 trauma center

The Ultrasound Fellowship at Denver Health is able to consider highly qualified applicants who have completed training at a PGY 1-3 program as well as certain specialties outside of emergency medicine.

2005

Department of Emergency Medicine
Denver Health Medical Center

9

Matthew Riscinti (Ultrasound Director, Fellowship Director)
Amanda Toney (Pediatric Ultrasound Director)
John Kendall (Hospital Wide Ultrasound Director)
Joseph Brown (US Faculty, University of Colorado)
Molly Thiessen (US Faculty, former Fellowship Director)
Noelle Northcutt (Director of Point of Care Ultrasound, Hospitalist Medicine, Denver Health Medical Center)
Juliana Wilson (Director of Emergency Ultrasound, University of Colorado Hospital Emergency Department)
Stephen Hoffenberg (Past-Chair ACEP Ultrasound Section)

Our goal is to create experts and leaders in clinical ultrasound who are primarily interested in disrupting the current ultrasound paradigm through

1. Seamless Clinical Excellence and Integration
2. Educational Design and Innovation
3. Cutting edge, global, User-Centric Ultrasound workflows
4. Achieving Operator Independence through AI software and modern hardware development.

Through these strategies, we will prepare our fellows to lead, in any ultrasound position they pursue, while improving the global Ultrasound system.

First, the fellow will gain expertise in the primary as well as the extended applications for emergency ultrasound. This will prepare the fellow to become an excellent sonologist. Clinical and scanning shifts will take place in the adult and pediatric emergency departments at DHMC. As a Denver Health attending, you will be exposed to extremely high acuity patients, which will greatly augment your post training clinical abilities. DHMC is an adult Level 1 trauma center and a pediatric Level 2 trauma center, with a diverse and high-acuity patient population. The Emergency Department at DHMC has state of the art ultrasound machines. Currently, 6 cart based machines and up to 14 handheld/portable ultrasounds in clinical use.

Each ultrasound fellow will be given their own portable ultrasound for the year. This is intended to augment their own clinical scanning, assist in the delivery of innovative lectures (wherever they may occur), and help create their own educational content.

A second component of the Ultrasound Fellowship will be exposing the fellow to varied teaching opportunities. Our faculty and fellows primarily run more 7 different of ultrasound curriculums.
1. Denver EM Residents
2. Denver EM Faculty
3. Children's Hospital of Colorado Pediatric Residents
4. Advanced Practice Providers (PAs/NPs within our department)
5. Prehospital Providers (some of whom are using portable ultrasound in their ambulances)
6. Medical Students at University of Colorado School of Medicine
7. Medical Students at Rocky Vista School of Medicine
8. Remote US fellowship throughout Guatemala (telemedicine and cloud based).

Fellows will also have opportunities to participate in ultrasound courses given locally, regionally, and nationally.

The third aspect of the fellowship program is devoted to administrative education. We have helped create and implement the world's first, academic, cloud-based QA system that integrates multiple different ultrasound systems, that fully integrates with the cloud, PACS, the EMR, which results in an extraordinarliy high numbers of documented, billable studies that can be viewed across platforms. The fellow will learn how this system works and how to build similar systems in the future.

Furthermore, this system will be implemented across hospital specialties yielding innumerable opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and education.

The final component to the Ultrasound Fellowship is scholarly activity. The fellow will be expected to formulate, initiate, and complete two original research projects. In order to accomplish this, the fellow will have access to a rich clinical environment, a research associate program, statistical support, and attending staff with strong academic backgrounds.

Many of our ongoing projects involve current clinical US questions, prehospital ultrasound utilization, resuscitative ultrasound, tele-guidance in ultrasound, and artificial intelligence in the quest of decreasing operator dependence.

Yes - as detailed above, we have a comprehensive, fully integrated, door to discharge, cloud based system that allows for full documentation and billing.

No - we are currently practicing true Point-of-Care Ultrasound and follow up imaging is performed only when clinically necessary.

Team building in incredible destinations including: River rafting, ski trips, mountain biking, and family dinners. All of this is a short drive from Denver Health.