Nurse Practitioner Use of Point-of-Care Ultrasound in Critical Care

The use of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is considered the standard of care in the management of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). No current evidence demonstrates the ability of ICU NPs to accurately utilize POCUS. The purpose of this project was to determine ICU NPs' ability to accurately acquire and interpret POCUS images. NPs working in a surgical ICU obtained POCUS images of the inferior vena cava and documented their interpretation of the volume status of the patient based on the image. ICU NPs demonstrated 86% acquisition accuracy and 80.5% interpretation accuracy of POCUS images.