CEUS then & now

I’m here in Toronto at the CEUS conference with a couple dozen POCUS educators from around the country. They come from all parts of the country, from academic centres, from large and small community hospitals, and from some of Canada’s more remote regions. We are debating all aspects of the certification process, both in the core and expanded applications tracks. We are going through all of the exams trying to get them just right. It’s a lot of work. But we’ve got a bunch of folks in the room to share the load. You can see us in the photo below. It’s a great honour to be here and working with such dedicated physicians, from multiple specialties. My, how CEUS has grown!

When I first saw the emails sent by Greg and Chuck to organize this meeting, I noticed the email addresses in the cc box. There were a lot! I couldn’t help but remember where CEUS came from. As many of you know, this started with one person: Ray Wiss. Ray had just started The Emergency Department Echo Course in 2001. His out of the box thinking on its pedagogical style is what set it apart from all bedside ultrasound courses of the day. The focus on image generation. The bedside teaching technique and probe time. The simple and straightforward approach and the removal of extraneous material. Even the name of the course “EDE”, chosen to distinguish bedside ultrasound from elective ultrasound, was bang on.

Not long after Ray started The EDE Course, he started CEUS. CEUS was more out of the box and, frankly prophetic thinking. A national certifying body for POCUS performed by emergency physicians that essentially stated, “We need to be tougher on ourselves than anybody else could or would be”. He wrote the written exam, developed the visual exam, collected the videos, created the scan sheets, the website, and the whole process, plus there was over a dozen years of unremunerated administration that followed.

So, sitting in the room today, with all these folks working so hard on the next big wave of development for this society, it’s hard to believe that one, slightly insane (!), individual got this all started 15 years ago. Ray has other priorities now and other projects. So, no one saw Ray in the room today. But he was there. We were standing on his shoulders.