About ARCTICA
ARCTICA is a prospective multi-site study that will evaluate a virtual Tele-POCUS educational intervention for non-conventional users of ultrasound assessing patients with dyspnea in geographically remote centres supported by tertiary centres in a cross-Canada Hub and Spoke model.
The ARCTICA project will: (1) Accelerate virtual teaching of POCUS to geographically remote physicians, and
(2) Provide virtual ongoing live-imaging consultation expertise to Northern or remote communities for continuous quality maintenance.
Collaborations
Meet the ARCTICA Team
Dr. Amer Johri
Dr. Steven Montague
Dr. Montague is a Clinician-Educator, and Assistant Professor within the Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine. He has a Bachelor’s of Science in Life Sciences, and a Master’s of Science in Neuroscience. He then graduated medical school at the University of Manitoba in 2013. Subsequently he completed both his core Internal Medicine residency and General Internal Medicine sub-specialty training at Queen’s University. He joined the Division of General Internal Medicine at Queen’s University in 2018. Dr. Montague’s inpatient clinical practice primarily involves clinical teaching units and general internal medicine consults. In the ambulatory setting his practice includes general internal medicine consults, and perioperative care. Dr. Montague’s academic interests include Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) and Medical Education. He is convinced that POCUS will soon become as much a part of the bedside assessment as the stethoscope, and is passionately teaching Internists about this powerful tool.
Dr. Salwa Nihal
Dr. Salwa Nihal graduated and practiced as a medical doctor overseas but has adopted Kingston as her home. Due to her experience in medical teaching and research, she has now taken steps to build a career in medical education and research. She did her Master’s degree in Human Physiology (2012) and completed a second Master’s degree in Anatomical Sciences at Queen’s University (2017). Dr. Nihal’s research interests lie in the development of online modules for Cardiac and Lung Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) for Medical Schools. She is the author of the first two chapters of E-learning POCUS modules for novel users currently housed on the ASE (American Society of Echocardiography) official website. She has successfully conducted a study for testing the POCUS modules with the medical students at Queen’s, funded by a SEAMO education grant. She is now the Manager, Transitional Institute of Medicine (TIME) in the Dept. of Medicine and continues to collaborate with CINQ on the ARCTICA project.
Dr. Blake MacKay
Dr. MacKay is a family medicine doctor and clinical lecturer at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine.
Dr. Jennifer MacKay
Dr. MacKay is a family medicine doctor who practises in the Sioux Lookout Region.
Dr. James Walton
Dr. Walton is a family medicine doctor who has practised in Moose Factory and the Weeneebayko Region.
Julia E. Herr, MSc, BSc
Julia Herr is a Research Coordinator for the ARCTICA study at the Cardiovascular Imaging Network at Queen’s, and the Managing Editor of POCUS Journal. She holds a BSc in Zoology and an MSc in Integrative Biology from the University of Guelph. Her areas of expertise include focused vascular ultrasound, carotid plaque quantification and greyscale image analysis of ultrasound images. She is also a medical illustrator.
Dr. Sherwin Wong, MD, BHSc
Sherwin Wong is an Internal Medicine Resident at Queen’s University with an interest in medical education and POCUS. He completed medical school at Queen’s University. Sherwin started to teach POCUS under the supervision of Dr. Johri in early 2020. With ARCTICA, he has primarily worked on module development, local workflow optimization and designed the ARCTICA logo.
Nicholas Grubic, MSc, BSc
Nicholas Grubic is a Senior Research Analyst at the Ottawa Health Research Institute/University of Ottawa ICES. He graduated from Queen’s University with a Bachelor of Science in Life Sciences in 2019 and a Master of Science in Epidemiology in 2021. His research interests include sudden cardiac arrest, sports cardiology, and point-of-care ultrasound. As an active research assistant at CINQ since 2018, Nicholas has worked on various projects surrounding cardiovascular imaging and point-of-care ultrasound.
Dr. Luke Wu, MD
Luke Wu is a PGY-4 resident with the Queen’s Internal Medicine program (July 2021-June 2022) and an avid user of point-of-care ultrasound. Since his first year in the Queen’s IM program, Luke has been carrying around a pocket ultrasound (GE V-Scan) and uses every opportunity to strengthen his ability to acquire and interpret POCUS images. Luke has been involved in a variety of POCUS teaching opportunities at both the local and national level, including teaching R1s how to landmark for thoracentesis and paracentesis to teaching workshops at the American Society of Echocardiography.
Jeffrey Lam, MB BCh BAO, BSc
Jeffrey Lam is an Internal Medicine Resident at Queen’s University. He completed medical school at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and has an interest in point-of-care ultrasound, cardiology, and medical education. He became involved with ARCTICA in 2020 and has assisted with module development and optimization of participant evaluation.