Ultrasound Tech Essay Example
What's an Ultrasound Technician you ask? Ultrasound technicians, also known as obstetric sonographers, use sonography to generate images of babies during pregnancy. While sonography is commonly associated with ultrasound imaging during pregnancy, this technology is also commonly used to diagnose diseases and check for injuries. Today, diagnostic sonography can be used to scan everything from the nervous systems to blood vessels, tumors and more. Due to the safety of this non-invasive technology and its ability to capture such detailed images, many health care professionals actually prefer ultrasound to other diagnostic scanning techniques like radiographic technology, and X-rays. Ultrasound technicians work in a variety of fields with specialty equipment to produce images of structures inside the body. The equipment emits inaudible high frequency sound waves that penetrate harmlessly into body tissues, and records the varying reverberations of the sound waves to create an accurate picture of the patient’s body. This sound imaging machinery works in a similar way as radar technology that is used to map ocean floors, except that ultrasound equipment is utilized to map the human body. Specialty areas of the job include using the equipment on the patient’s abdominal area, obstetrics and gynecology for female reproductive health, echocardiography for heart-related issues, nuerosonology for inspection of the brain and spinal cord, and opthalmology for looking at the patient’s eyes and correlating muscles. The General Education Those looking to join the ultrasound technician field must obtain at least a two-year Associate’s degree from a technician school that is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP), according to the Lancaster General College of Nursing & Health Sciences[->0]. To gain admission to an ultrasound program, applicants must have at least a high school diploma,