Cardiac Ultrasound Team in

Team Spotlight: Cardiac Ultrasound

How does your team make a difference at LTHT?

We help diagnose and manage patients with known and suspected heart disease, as part of a wider clinical team. Providing high quality diagnostic imaging and reporting has a huge clinical impact on the patient pathway. Cardiac ultrasound, or echocardiography, is by far the most frequently used imaging modality for the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease. We are a very busy service, with an ever increasing demand, however we are continually trying to improve the way we can deliver our patient services, and ensure our patients receive their tests in a timely manner.

What are the different roles within the team?

Student, specialist and highly specialist cardiac physiologists cover echo, physiologist led clinics, stress echo, bubble and contrast studies and transoesophageal echo. Our nurses and doctors are fundamental in the smooth running of our tests and nothing would happen without our helpful administration team.

What happens on an average day?

Most staff start at 8.30am and finish at 5pm. Various clinical MDTs can be attended first thing, but all echocardiograph appointments will then run throughout the day. Training with supervision happens every day alongside advanced scans and continuous communications with patients and hospital staff. Every patient contributes to an interesting, varied day! We undertake a varied range of scans in different locations. A big proportion of our work is undertaken in outpatient settings and we support a lot of services, providing an echo on the day of a clinic appointment. Our in patient service delivery means we have to travel across sites with portable equipment and scan at bedside. This can be very challenging as we are often scanning in limited conditions but still provide a good quality test that will help the clinicians make clinical decisions.

There is always a lot of triaging of requests at the beginning of the day.

“I have worked in the echo service at LTHT since 2003, I have seen the team constantly change and evolve, adapting as necessary.

The team is strong, resilient, caring and determined to deliver the best imaging they can. When

I think of the echo team I feel extremely proud of the work they do and the way they care about each other.” Hilary Jessop - Clinical Service Manager. What is the most surprising thing about your work?

The nature of our work means there’s always something new to look at and share with our colleagues. Always something new to learn, this keeps the work fresh. If something interesting is scanned the sonographers are always keen to share this with each other and provide teaching to junior members of the team. We enjoy sharing our images with each other when we are proud of the job we have done.

Even when the work is hard, the morale remains good and there is a lot of good humour shared.

There’s nothing that isn’t surprising about this team and the work.

Are there any recent achievements or plans for the future?

We have a new management team (including job creations and more senior positions) which has refreshed the team.

We’ve also had lots of new technical improvements including new echo machines and treadmills, training pathways, staff recruitment and service expansion. We filmed a promotional video for stress echo services, for patients, we would like to do more videos for other aspects of the service when time and waiting list demands allow us to. We are working hard to prioritise being a prominent part of the Echocardiography community, presenting at local and national meetings. We are also planning to host a British Society of Echocardiography (BSE) Accreditation day in September. BSE is our professional representative organisation.

What do you enjoy the most about working in the team?

Our team mates. We champion each other’s achievements and varied roles, and welcome new starters warmly. We are all good friends outside work which makes all aspects of our day easier!

Because we work across different sites the team mix changes daily so we get to work with different people.