Basic Ultrasound for Paediatrics (CACTUS) course

This Paediatric Ultrasound course is designed to provide a strong foundation in using Point-of-Care Ultrasound (PoCUS) equipment, obtaining useful views and understanding the applications of PoCUS in the care of children in acute and emergency settings. The course is approved by the Intensive Care Society (ICS) and Paediatric Critical Care Society (PCCS) and is suitable for those pursuing accreditation in Children's Acute Ultrasound (CACTUS) Lung and CACTUS Heart, whilst also covering vascular access and basic abdominal scanning.

Delivered as a full-day course, the programme combines short lectures on PoCUS applications in acute and emergency paediatric care with focused practical scanning sessions. Participants work with scannable paediatric manikins (simulating a two-year-old with multiple pathologies including free fluid, appendicitis, and intussusception), healthy volunteer children, and simulators reproducing lung, heart, and abdominal pathologies.

The course covers the following topics:
• Ultrasound equipment, probes, and key controls (probe selection, presets, depth, gain, freeze, linear measurement, colour-flow Doppler, M-mode)
• Lung ultrasound
• Basic cardiac ultrasound (ECHO)
• Abdominal ultrasound (liver, kidney, bladder localisation, identification of free fluid)
• Vascular access techniques
• Musculoskeletal ultrasound (fractures and foreign bodies)
• CACTUS accreditation process

By the end of the course, participants will be able to handle a range of different ultrasound machines (including hand-held devices), understand probe selection and image optimisation, practise obtaining PoCUS images of lungs, heart, abdominal organs, veins, nerves and foreign bodies, and learn how to use ultrasound to guide needles or cannulae.