POCUS in Daily Practice

Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is often associated with emergency and critical care medicine. But in reality, it can be a valuable tool in everyday veterinary practice, both in general practice, emergency and even specialist settings.

One of the biggest factors that determines whether ultrasound becomes part of daily clinical workflow is not training alone — it’s accessibility.

Sometimes the limiting factor to using POCUS in practice isn’t learning how to scan. It’s simply having the ultrasound machine easy to access when you need it.

Making Ultrasound Easy to Use

If the ultrasound machine is stored in another room, needs time to start up, or takes effort to move into position, it becomes much less likely to be used during routine patient assessment.

However, when the machine is powered on, ready to go, and easy to access, clinicians are far more likely to incorporate POCUS into their everyday examinations.

At SASH, for example, we keep the ultrasound machine powered on so it is immediately available when patients arrive. This removes a barrier and makes it easy to include ultrasound as part of the clinical workflow.

Instead of thinking of ultrasound as a separate diagnostic step, it can become a natural part of the patient assessment.

Bringing Ultrasound to the Patient

Another important factor is mobility.

Compact ultrasound systems allow clinicians to bring the machine directly to the patient rather than moving the patient to the ultrasound.

This means POCUS can be used in several areas of the hospital.

Triage Bench

POCUS can be incorporated into the initial patient assessment at triage. Rapid scanning can help identify important findings such as:

• pleural effusion

• congestive heart failure

• pneumothorax

• abdominal effusion

Having ultrasound available at the triage bench can help clinicians quickly narrow differential diagnoses and guide early treatment decisions.

Cage-Side Assessment

For hospitalised patients, ultrasound can also be used cage-side, allowing reassessment without unnecessary patient movement or stress.

This can be useful for:

• monitoring fluid status

• tracking response to treatment

• reassessing respiratory disease

• rechecking post-operative abdominal cases for fluid or ileus

Serial POCUS examinations can provide valuable information about how a patient is responding over time.

Consult Room Use

Ultrasound can also be incorporated into consultations for stable patients. Bringing the ultrasound into the consult room allows clinicians to perform focused scans or even a total systemic pocus scan as part of an extension of the physical exam while discussing the case with the client.

This can improve communication and help owners better understand what is happening with their pet.

Making POCUS Part of Daily Practice

Ultimately, integrating POCUS into everyday veterinary medicine depends on workflow.

When the ultrasound machine is ready to use, easy to access, and mobile, clinicians can incorporate it naturally into patient assessment. This allows POCUS to support both general practice and emergency medicine, improving patient evaluation, monitoring, and communication with clients.