Dr Jonathan Henry, one of our dedicated emergency physicians at Peninsula Health, was recently honoured by ASUM (Australasian Society for Ultrasound in Medicine) with their 2023 Humanitarian of the Year Award.
The award recognises his creation of the PEARLS (POCUS for Emergency and Acute care in Resource-Limited Settings) program, which aims to upskill frontline clinicians in the Pacific and beyond with Point-Of-Care Ultrasonography (POCUS) skills.
In 2022, Dr Henry travelled to Vanuatu to direct the inaugural PEARLS-ED course, providing ultrasonography education to doctors using handheld probes that plug into smartphones.
After the course, learners were encouraged to continue honing their skills by sending images to an anonymised, secure online cloud where they receive ongoing education and feedback from the faculty in Australia and New Zealand. PEARLS training has since been conducted in Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and Kiribati and planning is already underway for return trips and expansion to other Pacific nations.
Peninsula Health colleagues Dr Darsim Haji, and Dr Elise Pascoe, also contributed significantly to the program, Dr Haji having taught on the inaugural Vanuatu course and Dr Pascoe who led a team to PNG in November of 2023.
“I’m grateful for the ultrasound expertise I developed at Peninsula Health,” states Dr Henry, “The thriving and growing group of ultrasound enthusiasts within our Emergency Department have been a great support for this global health initiative.”
Congratulations to Dr Henry and his colleagues Dr Haji and Dr Pascoe for their extraordinary achievements.