EDE Course - Point-of-Care Ultrasound Comes to You.

Point-of-Care Ultrasound Comes to You

Since 2001, the EDE - ED Echo course has been taught over 1500 times to over 25,000 Canadian and international physicians and allied health professionals. Its use has become the standard of care in large trauma centers, remote settings and everything in between. It has even been used by Canadian Armed Forces combat units in Afghanistan.

EDE will teach you how to use bedside ultrasound to make life-saving diagnoses and improve efficiency in your ED, by ruling out life-threatening conditions rapidly. It can also allow you to achieve Independent Practitioner status by demonstrating competency in PoCUS.

The Best EDE Story

We receive numerous unsolicited testimonials from our graduates, informing us that the use of EDE has enabled them to make a great diagnosis or, not uncommonly, save a life. We have never published them. Such testimonials, if they are true, are invariably chosen from among the very best comments a course receives. We prefer to let our graduates tell other people in person their opinion of our course. However, the following letter spoke so powerfully both to the value of EDE and to the need to care for those less fortunate than ourselves, that we thought it was important to add it to our website. This was written by a Canadian anaesthesiologist working for a nongovernmental organization providing assistance in a country in sub-Saharan Africa in a state of humanitarian crisis. In preparation for his mission, this physician was provided with free training by the EDE Course, something EDE does regularly for people working in the developing world.

“You should know that your invaluable assistance and excellent teaching saved the lives of 3 people. In addition to assessing trauma and gunshot wound cases, I also assisted local midwives in assessing term pregnancies. The very first time I did an EDE on an obstetrics patient, I found previously unrecognized twins, both breech. The norm would have been for this woman to deliver in her mud hut home. However, given the high risk situation, we insisted this multiparous mother come to the hospital immediately with onset of labor. A week later she was delivered uneventfully of two scrawny but healthy boys (1900 and 2500 gms) by two midwives. But 30 minutes later she had a massive postpartum hemorrhage! The midwives had had the foresight to insert an IV on arrival, and the patient was treated immediately and successfully with crystalloid and oxytocin. Had I not diagnosed twins with the aid of EDE, the mother would have delivered in a hut a considerable distance from the hospital and would surely have died of hemorrhage. The maternal mortality rate in the country I was working in is a staggering 2 %, or 1 in 50! EDE could make a significant dent in that awful statistic.”

An easier way to learn

The course is unique in that it has continually evolved as the instructor team gained insight into the way beginners learn this skill. Numerous techniques were developed to help the learner acquire a basic understanding of ultrasound image generation and interpretation, making the EDE Course the most effective teaching vehicle for this modality. The great truth of ultrasound is that, image interpretation is easy. A training course must therefore focus on image generation, and the best way to do that is to give participants abundant probe time, under close supervision by highly skilled instructors.

EDE gives more probe time to its participants than any other course, because EDE is a skill that is learned from the wrist down, much more than from the neck up. There is no substitute for supervised practice, and that is something that can never go online.

How the online course works

The EDE Course has always been dedicated to providing the optimal learning experience for all its participants… whether they wanted it or not. Participants were rigorously pre-tested on the didactic material prior to coming to the course. The online version follows in this proud tradition. After registration, participants are given access to the introduction text and video. Successfully completing a test on this material unlocks the next module. This process is repeated until all the material has been covered in text and video form. By doing all of the didactic training ahead of time, the course day can be shortened, while giving still more probe time.

L'avantage bilingue

Le cours ÉDU est complètement bilingue. Les textes, les vidéos et les tests sont tous disponible en français.

The courses we offer

The course is offered across the country at various venues by regional subsidiaries. Individual participants can register for any of these courses. EDE can also come to YOU! if you wish to host the course in your center. Contact info@edecourse.ca for details.

EDE CORE

Meet the requirements for entry into the Canadian Point of Care Ultrasound Society (CPoCUS) CORE Independent Practitioner training program in a single course. Learn to use ultrasound to detect global cardiac activity, pericardial effusions, AAA’s, intra-abdominal hemorrhage, pneumothorax and pleural effusions/hemothorax, and intra-uterine pregnancies.
Military EDE

This course was designed for individual or groups seeking the specific EDE skills needed in kinetic environments. It was taught to several Canadian Armed Forces personnel who then deployed to Afghanistan during our mission there. Learn to use ultrasound to detect global cardiac activity, pericardial effusions, intra-abdominal hemorrhage, pneumothorax, hemothorax and fractures.
Family Medicine EDE

Enhance your physical exam by being able to detect AAAs, ascites, early pregnancies, and pleural effusions in your office.
Pregnancy EDE

For patients in the first trimester, you will learn to determine whether an early pregnancy is intrauterine, and whether a patient with a possible ectopic has intra-abdominal hemorrhage. For patients in the third-trimester, you will learn how to definitively answer the following key questions: Is fetal cardiac activity present? Is the fetal presentation head-down? Is the placenta safely distant from the cervix? Is there a normal amount of amniotic fluid? Is there more than one fetus?
Pediatric EDE

Learn to use ultrasound to detect global cardiac activity, pericardial effusions, intra-abdominal hemorrhage and fractures, and learn to place central and peripheral lines more safely and quickly under ultrasound guidance.
Internal Medicine EDE

Learn to use ultrasound to detect AAAs, global cardiac activity, pericardial effusions, ascites, pleural effusions and pneumothorax, and learn to evaluate the IVC as a marker of volume status.
ICU EDE

Learn to use ultrasound to detect global cardiac activity, pericardial effusions, intra-abdominal hemorrhage, pleural effusions and pneumothorax and learn to place central and peripheral lines more safely and quickly under ultrasound guidance.
Surgical EDE

Learn to use ultrasound to detect AAA’s, global cardiac activity, pericardial effusions, intra-abdominal hemorrhage, pleural effusions and pneumothorax.
Oncology/Palliative EDE

Enhance your management of the terminally ill by learning to detect global cardiac activity, pericardial effusions, ascites and pleural effusions. You will also learn how to perform paracentesis under ultrasound guidance.