The University of Melbourne

Postgraduate Clinical Ultrasound Courses 

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Applications for Semester 1, 2011 close end of November 2010.

Distance-based courses in Clinical Ultrasound

From July 2009, we implemented a new suite of courses which has built upon our highly successful Postgraduate diploma of Perioperative and Critical Care Echocardiography course.  We now provide a much broader range of options.  The new Certificate level course represents half the body of work of a Diploma, and will therefore be applicable for many specialists who wish to gain relatively rapid training an ultrasound that is very relevant to their own clinical area of specialty.

The second key change has been to implement the Core and Optional components to each course.  Therefore, approximately 50% of the content of the Certificate and of the Diploma course will be selected by the student to best reflect their own clinical interest and specialty.

The final aspect is the notion of Nested courses.  What this means, is that all students must enrole in the Certificate in the first instance (50 points).  If they wish to then proceed and complete a Diploma (100 points), the Certificate course already completed will count for 50% of the Diploma course; should they wish to complete the Masters course (150 points), then the diploma course work will be recognized as being the first 100 points of this course.  The new Diploma course will be directly equivalent to the old Diploma course but will offer updated course materials, scope and an extensive knowledgebase.#

Postgraduate Certificate of Clinical Ultrasound (PG Cert CU)

In order to broaden the scope of clinical ultrasound training and allow for greater participation, the new Certificate level course has been developed. This course will be half the length and extent of the Diploma course (4 subjects), and may be completed over one University Semester ( 12 weeks full-time), or over two university Semesters (24 weeks part-time). In addition the Certificate will have a core component which relates to a limited transthoracic echocardiography study providing qualitative assessment of the heart, the basic haemodynamic state assessment and basic valve interrogation. The second half of this Certificate course will include optional subject material that can be selected by the student to be most relevant to their own clinical practice. An example might be, for an anaesthetist, ultrasound guided nerve blocks and ultrasound guided vascular access modules.

The principal of this course is simple. All medical specialties need an understanding of basic haemodynamic state and basic cardiac assessment using ultrasound, in order to effectively manage acutely unwell patients, patients with multiple comorbidities or advanced age. This also serves to instruct students on the basics of ultrasound principles and techniques. The second part to this course is to provide useful and clinically relevant ultrasound practice that can be immediately applied by a student in their own medical specialty and clinical practice. Therefore the emphasis is to provide immediately applicable ultrasound training to a very wide range of medical specialty is at a moderately advanced level.

There will also be the introduction of 200 case reviews. In ultrasound-based learning, some of the training relates to the practical aspects of using the equipment and obtaining ultrasound images and videos. However, generally this is relatively straightforward and simple to learn. Therefore, the predominant skill in using ultrasound technology relates to the knowledge base that has learnt from these courses and its application in the interpretation of the images and videos. The student can be effectively trained using the identified and edited patient studies. They will be provided with software to analyse the images as they would on the echocardiography machine itself or an offline workstation such as is found in a cardiology for radiology suite. The students will be expected to then report their findings which will be compared to a report prepared by an expert from the University of Melbourne. This number will greatly exceed the minimum number of case reviews that any of the specialty colleges of medicine are currently implementing or proposing for the purposes of training and credentialling.#

Postgraduate Diploma of Clinical Ultrasound (PG Dip CU)
(This replaces the current PG Dip Echo)

Upon successful completion of the Certificate course, a new Diploma course will be introduced which will substantially expand the knowledge base in the cardiac and in the optional areas relevant for that student. This will also include a formal database reporting module. It will consist of an additional 4 subjects which can be either completed full time or part time.

This new diploma course will be directly equivalent to the old diploma course in both scope and extent.

An additional 200 case reviews with formal reporting will need to be completed. This will now bring the number of case reviews to a total of 400 which will be greatly in excess of the requirements of any of the specialty colleges for the purposes of training and credentialling. Additional access to case reviews will be possible subsequent to completing the course for further ongoing credentialling purposes.#

Masters of Clinical Ultrasound (PG M CU)

Finally, we will be introducing a Masters of Clinical Ultrasound, involving an additional 4 subjects. This will be open to those who have completed the Diploma of Clinical Ultrasound, or those students who have previously completed the postgraduate Diploma of Perioperative and Critical Care Echocardiography. This will be an advanced ultrasound course with additional subjects such as stress echocardiography, intravascular ultrasound and so forth. It will also include an audit or research project. It is intended that this course would be completed by those students who wish to become instructors in clinical ultrasound training, or the head of an ultrasound-based clinical laboratory diagnostic study within a hospital framework. It also includes an additional 200 case reviews, bringing the total number of case reviews completed to 600.