A simpler way to read the unstable patient.
EASy is a subcostal-first cardiopulmonary examination — heart, IVC, and lungs on a single probe. Those findings integrate into one hemodynamic phenotype, and the phenotype guides a defined management pathway.
Acquire. Phenotype. Act.
The drills, protocol pages and the six acquisition guides are open to view. All downloadable cards and PDFs are free with an account.
Average examination time, novice sonographers
A protocol that costs a quarter of the time is a protocol that gets repeated when the patient changes.
Fiorini & Basmaji, Can J Anaesth 2022Acquire. Phenotype. Act.
Acquire
The cardiac assessment begins with the subcostal window — heart, then IVC — and the same phased-array probe takes the anterior lungs. Additional views are obtained when the focused examination is inadequate or the clinical question remains unanswered.
Phenotype
Heart, IVC, and lung findings are interpreted together to characterize cardiac performance, venous filling and pressure context, and pulmonary aeration or congestion — read as one picture rather than weighed one at a time, then integrated with perfusion, clinical context, and the response to intervention.
Act
Each phenotype guides a defined management pathway. This is the step most focused-ultrasound curricula leave to the learner. EASy teaches it explicitly.
What's the phenotype?
Three windows, three seconds each. Call it, and see the decision it drives — the same read EASy asks for at the bedside.
72M · hypotensive, two days of vomiting
Case 1 of 3Which phenotype?
Reference loops, not patient recordings. No account needed — nothing here is scored or stored.
All ten phenotypes, with the cluster chart and the interactive explorer, are on the EASy MAP protocol page.
The 6 EASy Views
A systematic bedside exam using only a phased array probe, in a fixed order
Subcostal 4-Chamber
Visualize both ventricles, atria, and valves. Assess global cardiac function.
Acquisition card — openSubcostal IVC
Assess IVC size and respiratory variation for venous filling and right-sided pressure context, read with the heart and lung.
Acquisition card — openRight Upper Lung
Assess for A-lines, B-lines, and lung sliding at 2nd intercostal space.
Acquisition card — openThe modules need member access. The acquisition cards are open to view; downloading them takes a free account.
One window is a deliberate design choice.
Conventional focused echocardiography asks learners to master several acoustic windows before any of them is reliable. EASy begins with one — acquisition first, supervised interpretation second — and it says explicitly when the window is unavailable or the focused examination is not enough, and you should escalate.
Why this window?
It is the window that most often survives the situations where you need it most — during chest compressions, under drapes, in the ventilated chest.
A bounded exam is a safer exam — but only because the boundaries are explicit and someone is watching. EASy names its own limits, and during competency training every examination is saved and reviewed with an experienced physician. A major hazard in point-of-care ultrasound is not too few views — it is interpretation without adequate training, image review and oversight.
Day one is about acquisition. In a published implementation during the COVID-19 surge, after one day of focused training, novice residents obtained images sufficient for supervised clinical decision-making in 87% of 63 examinations, with a mean examination time of 4.3 minutes. Through deliberate practice and supervised repetition, the competency pathway targets reliable completion in under 3 minutes without compromising image adequacy.
In the prospective comparison, novice sonographers completed the EASy assessment in approximately 4 minutes, against approximately 16 minutes for a full focused transthoracic examination. Simulation builds the foundation; supervised bedside practice builds competence.
Built on and evaluated through peer-reviewed research
The EASy method, its feasibility in novice hands, and its head-to-head performance against focused transthoracic echocardiography are published — and independently reviewed in editorial and correspondence in Can J Anaesth.
“By simplifying the steps needed to obtain images and extract clinically actionable results, the goal is to broaden the range of clinicians who are able to use POCUS at the bedside.”
— Journal of Visualized Experiments, 2025
What it is
A bounded, subcostal-first examination: qualitative 2D pattern recognition across a handful of views, read as one hemodynamic phenotype, with interpretation supervised while competence is built.
What it is not
Not a comprehensive echocardiogram, not Doppler or quantitative calculation, not an autonomous diagnostic algorithm, and not a one-day route to independent interpretation. The subcostal window fails in a meaningful minority — EASy names that point and escalates.
Developed by Nibras F. Bughrara, MD, FCCM, FASA
Professor of Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine, Vice Chair of Education, and Division Chief of Critical Care at Albany Medical College. EASy is taught with collaborators from Johns Hopkins, Yale, and HSS, and used to train clinicians across North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
One foundation, purpose-built applications
Every clinician starts with EASy MAP, then adds workshops for the scenarios their team meets first.
Have subcostal clips or a teaching case? Upload for educational review with a free account — or submit a clinical scenario for faculty review. Automated AI phenotype identification remains in development.
Train your team to read the unstable patient
Built for the teams who meet shock, airway, and arrest first. Developed and evaluated through peer-reviewed clinical and educational research, and taught internationally through workshops, online courses, digital training drills, and investigational AI research tools.
EASy POCUS around the world
Courses run with local clinicians and societies across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean — built so the teaching continues after the visiting faculty go home.
Start reading the unstable patient
Learn the EASy approach — the six views, the phenotypes, and the decision — then take the free bedside cards to your ultrasound machine.
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