Surprise!

Hi Everyone,

Sorry it has been a long time. I didn’t write as many blog posts while in level 3, a lot of my time went into studying, scanning and homework. It was a busy semester and it came and gone so quickly.

Looking back this is what I thought about each level that I have done so far:

Level 1 was quick, we took 8 classes from September – December. You meet new friends, new teachers, new material and learning new skills. We had a Nursing course called Patient Care.

Level 2 was long, we had 10 classes from January – May, but some classes ended a bit early. The focus was on pathology. In lab there was more expectations on us to be at a certain level. I feel that I experienced a lot of growth in level 2. We took a Communications course and a Human Behaviour course.

Level 3 was quick, we had 9 courses from September – December. We learned most of the pathology in level 2 and so level 3 was about learning things in depth and cleaning up our skills. We learned all the academics at the end of the term, which to me is crazy!

I am now in Level 4, which is Clinical! It has only been a week and now we have to apply everything we have learned thus far, as well as, more learning is about to happen! Never stop learning, I believe at any age we are always learning new things.

Sonography Canada Core Exam

You can write these exams in January, May or September. Having not completed the program yet we can only write the Physics portion. I wrote my first exam on Jan 11th, it covered Physics, Patient Care, WHMIS, and more. The classes at BCIT more than prepares you for the exam. Some people have recommended Sonography Exam Review by Susanna Ovel. Note that there are some discrepancies in the book from what is taught in class. There is another source that is helpful and that is Davies, both of these sources are for ARDMS (American Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonography). They have practice questions which I find to be helpful. Notes from class and going over all assignments and exams will be helpful.

Surprising

There were a couple of things I thought I would share that I found surprising that I never knew before entering this program.

1. We perform endovaginal scans. These are scans to get closer look of uterus, babies, ovaries, and more. It is a probe that is inserted and brings us closer to these structures and is higher frequency, therefore making our images better quality.
2. Responsibility. We are the doctors’ eyes, we need to perform a thorough assessment and take representative pictures that paints a picture of what we saw. If we miss something, the doctor could miss it too.
3. Can move into veterinarian ultrasound. Not sure about the process, just heard that this is a possibility.
4. We perform musculoskeletal scans. We looking for things like tendonitis, and tendon tears.
5. In fetal ultrasounds, we can see when patients are having contractions and the baby moves a lot more than I expected even as early as 10 week.
6. We ultrasound boobs. Mammography is the gold standard, but we do ultrasounds to correlate information with the mammogram or for biopsy guidance.
7. We work together with CT, X-ray, labs, and other modalities to give a clear picture together of what might be going on.

I absolutely love being in this program!

Photo Cred: Featured Picture, level up, test, ultrasound face, and organs