“Relationship of Sonographer Credentialing to Intersocietal Accreditation Commission Echocardiography Case Study Image Quality,” by Merri L. Bremer, RN, ACS, RDCS, EdD from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota appears in the January JASE. Merri Bremer says, “I have often witnessed heated discussions regarding whether being credentialed makes you a ‘better’ sonographer, so I chose to examine a small portion of this complex issue for my doctoral dissertation. However, there is so much yet to explore.” The concise conclusion of her paper (which used an image quality score or IQS) is that “In the setting of IAC Echocardiography accreditation, credentialed sonographers achieved higher mean IQSs than noncredentialed sonographers in seven of eight comparisons. However, further research will be required to expand the scope of this inference beyond AS and LV regional dysfunction cases submitted for IAC adult transthoracic echocardiography laboratory accreditation.” Also in this New Year issue are ASE’s guideline on evaluating a cardiac source of embolism, research articles on left ventricular mass and function and valvular heart disease, and an editorial by Alan D. Wagoner, MHS, RDCS, FASE and J. Geoffrey Stevenson, MD, FASE, FACC “The Value of Sonographer Credentialing: An Important First Step,” that comments on Merri Bremer’s article.
January 7, 2016 By