Canadian Volunteers

Deirdre has many years experience in emergency medicine and anesthesia and in developing programs in Resource Limited Settings. She has training in tropical medicine and has practiced and taught POCUS for over 20 years

Ray developed the Emergency Department Echo Course which is responsible for training over 20,000 Canadian healthcare workers. He was a founding member of the Canadian Point-of-Care Ultrasound Society, (originally called CEUS). He is a proud veteran and passionate about the need to maintain the highest possible standards of training.

Lanice has training in family medicine and tropical medicine and a love of remote areas. She works in Canada’s northern remote communities and with refugees in the Refugee Health Clinic in Calgary, Alberta. She became concerned about the need for safe obstetric care while working with MSF in Africa and joined the working group to develop our Third Trimester Obstetric track.

Wendy is a Canadian trained general surgeon currently living in Nkinga, Tanzania. She joined the program in Arusha where she introduced POCUS to her surgical residency program and subsequently, as a master instructor and course director, has run EDE courses in Zimbabwe. She introduced the EDE course into the curriculum for all the incoming residents of the 26 Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons Residency Training Programs.

Yiwei is a Toronto graduate who practiced rural emergency medicine and GP anesthesia in NWT and Nunavut before landing her dream residency in Anesthesia. She loves all things ultrasound and is an advanced trainer for the program in Nairobi. She is part of the working group on 3OB track development.

Selma is an honorary Canadian having completed a fellowship in Trauma and Emergency Medicine in Toronto before returning to her home in Kuwait, where she ran an emergency department then developed Urgent Care Centres. She has a Masters in Medical Education with special interest in exam construction and experience in faculty building. She has instructed in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

Lindsay is a Consultant Physician in Internal Medicine at University of Alberta Hospital. She has personal and professional ties to both Kenya and Tanzania. So, when she found she could learn POCUS at a CME course while her donation subsidized the course costs for her African colleagues, she jumped at the chance. Then she was hooked and joined the team as a volunteer and now instructs in the AC Core Plus course.

Michelle is Chief of the Emergency Department at Strathcona Community Hospital, Edmonton. Her background in medical teaching is bolstered by her professional training as a coach. She joined the program as an instructor in Arusha, where she taught AC Core and nurtured the fledgling 3OB track. Her love affair with Africa goes back to her days as an epidemiologist with MSF. So, when it came to getting advance Resuscitation POCUS training she naturally came to us.

Hetoum completed his Fellowship in Acute Care Ultrasound at the University of Ottawa and is the Scientific Director for the Echo-Guided Life Support Course, a CPoCUS accredited Resuscitation skills course. So, when it came to introducing advanced skills training to our faculty, he was the ideal team member.

Greg is a Specialist in Emergency Medicine and completed an Ultrasound Fellowship at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. He is a Master Instructor for Basic and Resuscitation Tracks. His fluency in french was ideal for the PAACS EDE courses as many of the participants come from francophone Africa.

Edrea is a graduate of McMaster University and practices full scope family medicine in remote communities in Northern Canada and so, is no stranger to the constraints of resource limitation. She is an experienced instructor with EDE Bootcamps at Brantford, Ontario.

Pierre-Paul is a Clinical Associate Professor at UBC and a Nunavut Family Physician. Africa is close to his heart as his parents founded an NGO to work with communities around Lake Victoria. He himself crowd funded a Butterfly iQ for his trip to Nairobi which was donated to a PAACS resident at the 2024 course in Limuru.

A graduate of the University of Alberta, Elfriede is an Emergency and Transport Physician. An experienced EDE and EDE2 instructor she was a team member on our initial training trip to Nairobi in 2019.

Michelle has experience with coordination of the EDE course and teleguidance logstics.. She was a team member on our 2024 trip to Dar es Salaam when we tested the feasibility of integrating remote instruction into our courses.