The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) is a medical society comprised of hospitalists that exists to promote exceptional care for hospitalized patients.
Through the POCUS for the People initiative, we partnered with Hospital Nacional de Coatepeque, a 230-bed public hospital serving a largely rural population in southwestern Guatemala, to expand access to point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) and develop a sustainable training model for resource-limited hospitals. During Phase 3, we completed the implementation of the Internal Medicine Focused Assessment with Sonography Tool (IM-FAST) project, a novel ultrasound curriculum designed to provide high-yield diagnostic and procedural skills through a low-barrier, clinically impactful framework tailored to internal medicine.
The SHM Global and Rural Health Foundation grant was instrumental in advancing this phase by supporting on-site training, curriculum implementation, and a train-the-trainer model that aims to prepare local physician champions to independently teach and sustain POCUS education. In addition to IM-FAST, we delivered workshops on pediatric lung ultrasound and basics of ultrasound-guided vascular access, and a four-day intensive workshop on comprehensive lung, basic card, and deep vein thrombosis evaluation for selected internal medicine champion educators. This work is helping establish Hospital Nacional de Coatepeque as a model for expanding diagnostic capacity in similar resource-constrained settings where access to formal imaging is limited.
