I am currently training to be a sonographer and am acutely aware of the difficulties in dealing with people when an I detect an abnormality on a scan.
I am keen to hear of your experiences and more importantly of how you would like the sonographer to act/help/explain things etc. I know how important this is and want to do everything I can to make sure I am as sensitive as possible and try not to make anything worse than it already is.
I have already been involved with some terrible abnormalities (I hate that word, but not sure how else to describe them) and have found that I am really quite emotional. Obviously it is of no help to the patient if I am blubbing away and I have never been quite that bad, but close to. I feel a bit of a fraud for feeling like this as I know the patient/partner etc will be feeling a thousand times worse.
If you have been in this unfortunate position would you rather the sonographer was 'professional and detached' or would some sign of genuine emotion (and it really is genuine) be of any comfort? I totally understand that the feelings of the sonographer etc are likely to be the furthest thing from your mind when you are hearing awful and probably unexpected news for the first time but if there is anything I can do to do this part of my job better then I'd like to try.
Sonography can be such a wonderful job, but terrible at the same time, but if I feel I can really try to understand the needs of a patient in this situation then I will have done the best 'job' I can. Sorry for the long post, but having been in this situation today I really felt like I need some advice on this. We get no 'official' training on this either how to deal with patients specifically, or how to handle our own feelings, of course I have asked the qualified sonographers, but I think it is more important to get some views from the 'other side' so to speak.
Thankyou for any experiences or advice you are able to share.
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Experiences of sonographers at scans where abnormalities have been found
25 replies
MairyHuff · 27/07/2012 20:00
OP posts:
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