Concerns about patients receiving incorrect or missed diagnoses due to poorly performed ultrasounds have prompted calls for Australian sonographers to be brought under the purview of a regulator, after an increase in insurance claims blaming them for poor-quality images.
Former Australian Sonographers Association’s CEO Jodie Long said if sonographers don’t take the right images, “the reporting doctor can’t draw the right conclusions”.
“Sonographers are responsible for determining whether something is normal or abnormal, and which images are taken as a result,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald.
The association is asking for sonographers to be registered under the Medical Radiation Practice Board of Australia, one of 15 boards overseen by the national health practitioner regulator, AHPRA. The change would also restrict who could call themselves a “sonographer”.
Long wants the submission to be on the agenda at the national Health Chief Executives Forum, a meeting of the heads of each Health Department, this week, after making a similar attempt two years ago.
The forum advises Australia’s Health Ministers, who determine which practitioners are regulated by AHPRA.
Last year, the Ministers said they would stop doctors without appropriate qualifications using the title “surgeon” after decades of industry pressure and a series of investigations into “cosmetic cowboys” by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
“The majority of sonographers are doing an amazing job, but like any profession there will be a small number not up to scratch,” Long said.
Sonographers who are also qualified as radiographers can already have complaints made to the medical radiation board, of which they are members.
But while most sonographers used to have radiography undergraduate degrees before studying sonography, which is a postgraduate qualification, Long said most now choose general health sciences degrees or direct entry to sonography, leaving 75% of Australia’s 7 000 sonographers outside the scope of the regulator.
The association’s submission is supported by 35 other stakeholders, including the Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists.
A spokesperson for the federal Department of Health and Aged Care said sonographers worked in a “well regulated” health system with responsibilities shared between governments, independent regulators and employers.
“Complaints are managed through the National Code of Conduct for Healthcare Workers (where implemented) and oversight by Health Care Complaints entities in each state and territory,” it said.
But Long said these state codes of conduct for professionals not regulated by AHPRA focused more on professional misconduct – like patient safety, relationships and confidentiality – than incompetency.
“We don’t want to find ourselves in a situation where multiple legal claims can be brought against a sonographer without any measures to address their performance.”
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