2021-2022 Board of Directors

SPOCUS has brought together clinicians & students from many specialties, practices, and walks of life, all of who are united in their passion for point-of-care ultrasound. Our members recognize the great value that ultrasound offers to our patients, and our practice. We are fortunate to have a board of directors comprised of experienced practitioners with skills and knowledge in the practice, education, and administration of point-of-care ultrasound, who are listening to the needs of our members and always pushing to expand POCUS into undiscovered realms.

Cynthia Bennett

Cynthia C Bennett, OBGYN

President

Dr. Bennett is a board-certified OB/GYN who attended medical school at The University of North Carolina School of Medicine and residency at the University of Florida/ Shands Teaching Hospital. After leaving clinical practice, Dr. Bennett joined the faculty of Elon University’s Department of Physician Assistant Studies, where she is an Associate Professor. Dr. Bennett teaches heavily in the basic sciences, including anatomy, physiology, and pathophysiology, as well as teaching reproductive medicine and surgical skills. Dr. Bennett learned obstetric/ gynecologic ultrasound as a resident and worked with ultrasound actively as a practitioner. She is excited about the possibilities that POCUS education brings for PA students and has loved both training in POCUS herself and teaching her students the many applications of POCUS.

Aaron-inouye

Aaron Inouye, PA-C

Past President

After various careers as a baker, editor, ski patroller, pond-builder, and outdoor educator failed to lead him to fame, fortune and fulfillment, Aaron finally buckled down and earned a degree from Pacific University’s PA program. Since then he has been happily practicing emergency medicine in rural Idaho and Western Colorado.
Aaron is an Ultrasound Leadership Academy graduate. While he enjoys discussing all things ultrasound, currently he is particularly interested in incorporating musculoskeletal US into acute care settings and developing training and credentialing programs for both practice and educational settings.

Quinn

Megan Quinn

President - Elect

Megan represents nursing professionals and students who bring the benefits of increased POCUS access to a wide patient population.

She says it has been very rewarding to see the hard work of the POCUS community resulting in improvements in patient care, but we still have a long way to go. Access to affordable educational opportunities is a barrier for many POCUS learners. She would like to help address the problem of meeting the very high demand for POCUS education. One of the ways the Board can help is to celebrate people who are generous with sharing their knowledge, support them, and boost them so they can inspire others.

Julie Jablonski

Secretary/Treasurer

Julie is a critical care PA at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts working in the cardiac surgery ICU. She has been at PA for almost four years and was fortunate to begin her career with a foundation of POCUS education during PA school. She attended Emory PA program and was a student at the 2018 iScan event and got hooked on POCUS since. She completed a Critical Care Residency at Emory Critical Care Center and did special training in POCUS during that time. Post-residency, she created a POCUS elective for PA residents and taught POCUS at the bedside as well as a lecture series. She has also provided some guest lectures to PA programs on POCUS and a lecture to AASPA on ultrasound-guided vascular access. She recently relocated to Western Massachusetts, where she is learning new ICU stuff in a cardiac surgery ICU with lots of post-ops and mechanical circulatory support, but finding POCUS is ever applicable. As a SPOCUS member, she has been involved to varying degrees in iScan, including writing a large portion of the pool of questions for the event.

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Daniel Sturm, MMS, PA-C

Director at Large

Daniel Sturm is a physician assistant and full-time faculty member at Butler University. He currently works part-time in an urgent care setting and has a primary care background working in family and internal medicine. Daniel graduated from Midwestern University, Downer’s Grove campus in 1997. His passion for ultrasound began to grow a few years ago when he joined SPOCUS and was tasked with implementing ultrasound into the PA curriculum at Butler University. He has served as a House of Delegate member for the Indiana Chapter for the past 3 years. Previously, he was the chair of the Indiana Academy of Physician Assistants and was instrumental in planning an annual CME conference and helped develop a student track for this conference, which includes a state-level Medical Challenge Bowl for Indiana PA students. In addition, he serves as the faculty advisor for the Butler student ISCAN ultrasound team. In his spare time, Daniel is an active adult leader for Scouts BSA. He is married with two children and resides in Westfield, Indiana.

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Kimberly Kuphal, PA-C

Director at Large

Kim is passionate about ultrasound education for practicing physician assistants and incorporating POCUS into PA school curriculum. She teaches POCUS to both physicians and physician assistants at her hospital and developed a focus internship for students attending PA school in Wisconsin. She is currently adjunct faculty at Marquette University and is involved in developing a curriculum for teaching ultrasound. She has taught POCUS at iScan, AAPACVS, and Wisconsin AAPA Conference.