To date, there is no standard guideline for the practice of point-of-care ultrasound for this specialty.
There are also significant lessons to be learned from the disciplines of emergency medicine and critical care medicine with respect to developing curricula and standards of practice for point-of-care ultrasound [25 28].
To determine the reasons for this, we surveyed 120 anesthesia, emergency, intensive care, and internal medicine consultants at the Royal Melbourne Hospital on their knowledge and practice of point-of-care ultrasound.
Analysis of microvascular density parameters is time consuming and operator-dependent.1 This is the main limitation to use microvascular monitoring in clinical practice as a "point-of-care" tool.
Current clinical and laboratory measures such as HbA1c, blood pressure, fasting blood glucose, body weight, LDL, HDL, total cholesterol and pulse were assessed by the practice team using point-of-care laboratory analysis and/or external laboratories.
What are your preferred formats of guidelines or guideline resources to support uptake of best practice at point of care?
% Responses Always use guidelines (37/170) 22% Usually use guidelines (81/170) 48% Occasionally use guidelines (50/170) 29% Guidelines not used or discussed (2/170) 1% Preferred formats of guidelines or guideline resources to support uptake of best practice at point of care?
The Knowledge-to-Action cycle [ 43] has been successfully adapted to other physician KT projects; effective ways to change physician behaviours and practices apply multiple brief learning formats and include interactive small group practice, case-based learning, point-of-care reminders, audit and feedback, incentivization, and opinion leaders or "champions" [ 44].
The goal of this project was to determine if it is best practice to perform a point-of-care dipstick urinalysis for all specimens before a VCUG or only for those that were suspicious for a urinary tract infection (UTI) based on the assessment of the patient's urine and clinical history.
In practice, studies of these point-of-care tests showed that sampling of oral fluid identified fewer infections than plasma or whole blood and that point-of-care testing identified only 91% of antibody-positive men who have sex with men (MSM) and 80% of MSM detected by HIV RNA polymerase chain reaction.
