The Required Education For An Ultrasound Technician

There are certain legal requirements for ultrasound technology as a career

. An ultrasound technologist must go through training for two years in a program that is the equivalent of an associates degree. This degree - and the certification that comes with it - is all that is required to continue with the ultrasound technologist career. Once you have this certification, you can get a career pretty much anywhere you want.

If you get a degree higher than this, you probably are better off entering a separate field in the health sector. If you have a bachelor's, degree, say, you are overqualified for the position as an ultrasound technologist. The training in general requires a thorough understanding of how ultrasound machines work, as well as the understanding of how to read any images produced by the ultrasound technology. It also requires a basic knowledge of anatomy and the fields that are involved in ultrasound medical technology. Today, for the most part, this refers primarily to getting images of babies in mother's uterus and telling if they are a boy or a girl, or if they have development problems in uterus that need attention before birth. Sonography has trouble getting through bones, but it does an excellent job imaging fluids within the body, making it an excellent tool for use on organs that are not protected by bone. This makes it useful for gastroenterology, urology, and cardiology. With the proper training, sonography can be used on the heart through the ribcage. It is used in these situations to tell the blood flow from the heart and to see if there are any blockages within any of the major arteries. It can also be used to tell problems within the stomach and in the urinary tract. It can also work as a quick, makeshift x-ray to tell if there are any breaks in bones, though it is nowhere near as good as an actual x-ray. The only part of the body that can not be viewed with ultrasound technology is in the brain, since the brain is entirely encased in bone.

Duties of an Ultrasound Technologist

The usual job for ultrasound technologists is to work with pregnant women to pick up images of the baby on the ultrasound screen and determine if there are any problems with what the development of the baby. If there are problems that are beyond their ability to deal with, they inform the pregnant woman's OBGYN, who then takes care of it. The ultrasound technologist works closely with doctors to let them know what they can tell from the ultrasound that they are reading, though they don't actually do any diagnostics, as they are not trained to do so. They are responsible for understanding basic anatomy and issues that could come into play while working with ultrasound technology, but not so much that they can make diagnoses off of them.

Ultrasound Technologist Salary

For the amount of training required of an ultrasound technologist, they make a lot of money. Like most of these jobs, the amount you get paid depends largely on how much experience you have and where you work, but the average ultrasound technologist salary lies at around $50,000 a year, and can go up to $70,000 a year. There are a couple of options where an ultrasound technologist can work, but it is often in tandem with a gynecologist. This means that they are a specialist within a gynecologists office, and work solely on the pregnancy issue. Hospitals will also have a number of ultrasound technologists on staff just in case. In general, they will make more in a private practice than they will in a hospital.

by: Dianne J. Crouse

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