Division of Ultrasound Medicine

Our Ultrasound Division has been expanding since its inception in 2002 with Colleen Campbell serving as the division director. Since this time we have grown to eight full time faculty with representation at UCSD, the Veterans Association Medical Center, and Rady Children’s Hospital. Lead by Anthony Medak and Sukhdeep Singh, we are active in teaching all first, second, and fourth year students ultrasound at the School of Medicine in this well-loved course.

Our residents start out with intern ultrasound bootcamp for two weeks during their orientation. Dr. Nadolski directs hands-on training in addition to our posted lectures during this time. We add depth of training over the entire residency with at least four weeks of ultrasound in total. Scanning shifts occur at Rady Childrens Hospital, UCSD at both sites, in the ICU and in the ED, and at the VA Medical Center in the ED. Thanks to our previous fellow, Michael Macias, we have a website with all of our lectures available, interesting cases, journal review, and brief tutorials on relevant ultrasound topics at: https://emultrasound.sdsc.edu/. Check it out!

Our fellowship was started in 2010 and, when EUFAC began the accreditation process, we received a three-year accreditation thanks to the hard work of Fellowship Director Dr. Amir Aminlari. This coming year the fellowship will be led by Dr. Singh with Dr. Aminlari serving in a mentoring role. We have produced successful fellows annually with many going on to lead ultrasound divisions in academic and community health systems." and can continue from there.  We accept one fellow a year currently. Ultrasound faculty and the fellow participate in weekly journal club review, QA sessions and biweekly scanning shifts. There’s not much better than taking the boat out in the beautiful San Diego Harbor with the UCSD ultrasound gang, going over some articles, and enjoying a drink and the sunset. The division has been active in research involving sterile gel vs non-sterile, diagnosis of PE, as well as analyzing ultrasound in the use of tendon injuries and for the diagnosis of sting-ray barb detection. We have Zonare Ultrasound machines as well as GE Venue Ultrasounds and Sonosite machines.

It is our passion to share our love of ultrasound with other specialties. We trained our nurses to do peripheral IV’s and have been working to train the hospitalist group as well as the Family Medicine. We participate in the Bread and Butter Ultrasound course and have hosted our own UCSD Ultrasound Summit.

Finally, many of us are very active in international ultrasound. Our first trip was to Mozambique in 2012. Dr. Smyres has lead our team to Peru and Ghana and Dr. Singh has spearheaded our teaching efforts in Uganda and Mexico. Our goal is to leave machines where we teach in order to continue to provide immediate diagnostic capabilities to our colleagues in other countries. We are looking forward to our next trip in Ecuador, as soon as we are able to travel safely once again. The ultrasound division has also partnered with El Centro Regional Medical Center (ECRMC) in El Centro, CA for residents to gain POCUS exposure at ECRMC, with protentional to do scanning shifts across the border in Mexicali.

We look forward to continued growth of our division in the ever- fascinating field of point-of-care ultrasound!

See more information on the Division of Ultrasound Website