Sonographers

hugheye

I wanted to reach out and see if anyone is willing to share how they have structured the sonographer support for their fetal programs. I know that large centers have their own fetal sonographers who only do that work, but I am most interested in the smaller/medium sized programs.

How do you provide 24/7 coverage for outpatient/inpatient/surgical support?
How many sonographers cover the needs of your program?
What is a typical weekly schedule for the sonographers who cover the fetal program?

Thanks!

krisrimbos

hugheye hello! We are a medium / larger program but wanted to share our structure. Our format recently changed due to challenges recruiting sonographers that are being seen across the country. We recently hired a sono that works just in our fetal clinic. She works 4 ten hour days and came from a MFM clinic. On the 5th day of the week, sonos from within our Peds hospital that have been trained to do fetal perform scans in our clinic. They, along with others used to cover us 5 days a week and there were 5 of them that rotated through. They are all excellent! They still all take call for evening / weekend procedures. I hope that helps and feel free to reach out if more info is needed!

AmyPowne

Hi,
UC Davis has a smaller fetal program - we share a 1.0 sonographer with one of our OB US sites. We have a primary sonographer who is with us 2.5 days for fetal clinic and if need for surgeries or add-ons, we beg to get her back. The OB US site is amazing and can usually help us out. She mainly only does clinic and ORs, but if we are slow or she is able, she performs inpatient scans. She works 5 days a week. When she is out one of the other sonographers who has been oriented to our clinic will come and cover if they can.
Email me with additional questions - abpowne@ucdavis.edu
Amy Powne 🙂

KatieFrancis

Our sonographers are part of the larger MFM sonographer group. They come to our clinic space for 2 clinic days a week. We have two sonographers that rotate through. The continuity is so helpful and they are very experienced with fetal anomalies. We are not currently offering fetal surgery, but when we did, we would ask them to attend cases. If they could not, an OB resident would attend to run the ultrasound machine.

MegJenks

Hi all,

I know this is an older post, but I was hoping to piggyback a bit on it since the topic is similar. We have 1.0 FTE that works solely in our clinic M-Th. Then we have a sonographer from the different MFM offices support us on Mondays and Wednesdays when we need 2 sonos. If we have sick calls or vacation, I reach out to both teams and beg for help lol.

An issue I am recently facing is that the sonographers that do come to fetal center feel that because it is a specialty clinic that they should make a differential or higher wage than working at the regular MFM office. I am not disagreeing with them, but we don't have a "grade" higher than what they are currently are. I am willing to advocate and push for a higher grade/wage, but would love some insight from other fetal centers as well.

Thanks,
Meg
megan.jenkins@imail.org