Educating the future sonographic workforce: membership survey report from the British Medical Ultrasound Society

Abstract

The British Medical Ultrasound Society (BMUS), the Consortium for the Accreditation of Sonographic Education (CASE), education providers and the NHS are working together to review how best to develop education for the future sonographic workforce. There is currently a national vacancy rate of approximately 12% across NHS Trusts. Education course placements are often limited to the number of clinical training places available within departments, resulting in a disparity between vacancies and the numbers of qualified sonographers graduating. Clearly there is a need for education to match the service demand. A term often used as a solution to the workforce problem is 'direct entry' ultrasound education. Anecdotally this term has caused confusion amongst health care professionals and as such the aim of this work was to gain an understanding of the views and opinions of BMUS members and interested professionals about direct entry training and subsequent development of any future training programmes. BMUS undertook an online survey with 286 responses. The survey provided insight into the opinions of ultrasound practitioners and the complexities of developing a relevant educational programme for the future sonographer workforce. The results suggested a number of concerns with direct entry ultrasound programmes, including insufficient training places, lack of health care background knowledge, lack of imaging knowledge and no state registration specific to sonographers. Benefits of direct entry to ultrasound training were perceived to be increasing the number of sonographers trained each year, whilst training people in their first choice profession with skills developed specific to the sonographer role. Support for direct entry ultrasound training was limited to 51% of respondents who would advocate this form of ultrasound training if it led to qualified sonographers with the same skills as sonographers exiting from current CASE accredited programmes.

The benefits and challenges of employing new sonography graduates: Key stakeholder views

“…Parker and Harrison (2015) found 51% of all respondents were in favour of the introduction of a direct entry route into ultrasound at undergraduate level provided it produced sonographers with the same skills set and level of competence as current courses do. Unfortunately, a comparison cannot be made to respondents' views towards the postgraduate direct entry route as the survey report fails to present whether or not these views were sought.…”

“…Whilst documents have been produced highlighting best practice for ultrasound training (HEEM, 2013) in reality, departments struggle to adhere to them or even to offer any trainee places at all. Placement capacity, is therefore, a major limiter to the number of ultrasound trainees that can be accommodated in a department (Parker & Harrison, 2015).…”

“…(SCoR & BMUS, 2016, p. 7) In keeping with this, the majority of current ultrasound education in England is at postgraduate level. However, this creates a key problem as it facilitates the training of only small numbers of trainee sonographers, creating a disparity between the number of sonographers being trained and the number required to deliver increasing service demands (Martin, 2015;Parker & Harrison, 2015).…”

“…This view concurred with the findings of Parker and Wolstenhulme's study in 2012. However, this opinion was contradicted by other respondents who raised concerns over the lack of training places regardless of educational level (Parker & Harrison, 2015). Martin (2015) also recognised there was an issue with access to clinical placements due to the pressures faced by the current 23 sonography workforce, regardless of which training model was advocated.…”

“…Parker and Harrison (2015) acknowledged that departments are limited in the number of clinical training places they can offer and therefore gave consideration to the use of simulation. Other authors have explored the use of simulation for assessing clinical competencies (Harrison, 2015) and in gaining clinical skills (Gibbs, 2014).…”