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Ultrasound Guided Nerve Blocks and Vascular Access
Download the Brochure here: 
** 2009 COURSES NOW AVAILABLE FOR REGISTRATION**
General Information
Email: echo-info@unimelb.edu.au
Welcome to the course. In this guide, I will outline the development of the course, give a course overview, and supply basic instructions on how to use the material on CD-ROMs and in the work booklets.
| NERVE BLOCKS & VASCULAR ACCESS | |
| Melbourne | September 20 & 21, 2008 - FULLY SUBSCRIBED |
| Cairns | May 07 & 08, 2009 - FULLY SUBSCRIBED |
| Melbourne | October 03 & 04, 2009 |
Registration fee for 2008 Workshops = $1200.00 (inclusive of GST) AUD
Registration fee for 2009 Workshops = $1250.00 (inclusive of GST) AUD
1. Development of This Course
Echocardiography has seen a meteoric rise in use in ultrasound since the mid-1990s in Australia, and around the world in general. The use of ultrasound to guide procedures has been used extensively by radiologists for years, but in recent times anaesthetists, intensivists and ED physicians have embraced the technology. This course builds on our initial Point of Care Ultrasound course, as we found that a number of colleagues wanted more teaching and practice related to nerve blocks.
Accordingly, we have put together a package of instruction to cover a wide range of blocks as well as a tutorial on vascular access.
2. The Course Development Team
The course is administered through the University of Melbourne. We've chosen the University because it has the extensive infrastructure required to run an educational programme of this nature. The course directors are Colin and Alistair Royse, who head the Human Cardiovascular Research Laboratory in the Cardiovascular Therapeutics Unit, Department of Pharmacology, University of Melbourne. In setting up this course, we have recruited a steering committee comprised of experienced educators in echocardiography within Australia and New Zealand. The members of the steering committee are involved in setting the educational objectives, coordinating subjects, liaising with individual tutors, and setting examinations. They include Roman Kluger, Paul Soeding, Michael Veltman, Ajay Kumar, Lenore George, Konstantin Yastrebov and John Farris. We have also asked James Lai, Chris Nixon and Neil McLennan from the Auckland City Hospital in New Zealand, and Peter Hebbard from Wangaratta to be contributors to this course, as well as a number of colleagues from Westmead Hospital including Alwin Chan, Chris Ashley, Clement Fong, and Nav Gupta. Many of these colleagues will be involved in either course preparation or conduct of the hands on workshops. I am also indebted to our administrative staff including Marcelle Wood, Kerrie Edmond and Danielle Nicholas (Cardiac Sonographer).
3. Course overview
This course is divided into two components. The first component you have received in this package, which is the theoretical part of it. It consists of 5 interactive tutorials on DVD, with integration of text and images. It is vital that you study these tutorials and be familiar with the work before you come to the weekend aspect of the course. We will not go over the theory on the weekend, because we want to reserve that for as much hands-on practice as is possible, facilitated by tutors.
The second part of the course is the two days that you come to practice “hands-on”. There are five stands, and delegates are divided into five groups. The idea is that you rotate through each of the five stands in order to cover all aspects of the course. We will start each session with the tutor demonstrating how to perform the echocardiography or ultrasound examination relevant to each stand. We will then rotate the delegates to have hands on practice, aiming for at least two practices per person per stand. Of course we will welcome any questions you have that you may not have understood from the tutorials, but our experience with this type of is that there is a lot of information in the tutorials, and most people seem to be able to learn that information really well prior to practising the actual technique.
Some of you may have enrolled or completed the Postgraduate Diploma of Perioperative and Critical Care Echocardiography. You'll notice that some of the tutorials are modified from the Postgraduate Diploma course. For the others, you will identify the type of teaching that we do in the Postgraduate Diploma course. The aim of the tutorials, however, are to provide you with extensive knowledge in that area, and the aim over the two days is to practice it in order to give you enough confidence to start doing it yourself in practice.
The Topics
1. Vascular Access
In this tutorial and stand, you will learn to identify the sonoanatomy of the Internal Jugular, Subclavian, and Axillary veins for the purpose of central venous access. Peripheral veins and arteries are also covered for arterial pressure monitoring and PICC line insertion. Finally the Femoral vessels are identified. There will be an opportunity to practice on phantoms (gel models) to get your hand-eye co-ordination going.
2. Upper Limb Blocks
The focus is on the brachial plexus and how to identify the nerve bundles from the interscalene, supraclavicular, infraclavicular and axillary approaches.
3. Lower Limb blocks
The focus is on the major upper limb nerves: Femoral, Sciatic and Saphenous nerve blocks
4. Abdominal and Thoracic blocks
You will find this very interesting because a number of the blocks can only be performed accurately with ultrasound. The transverse abdominus plane (TAP) block is a good example and an emerging “really hot” block to perform.
5. Peripheral Nerve and Miscellaneous nerve blocks
This section will cover many of the peripheral nerves in the upper and lower limbs and blocks and additional blocks not covered in the other tutorials.