1. SDMS is Moving!
   
2. SDMS Survey: Physician Supervision of Obstetrical Sonography Examinations
   
3. SDMS Adds ANOTHER New Member Benefit
   
4. Joan Baker to Speak on Ergonomic Hazards
   
5. SDMS Responds to California "Tom Cruise" Bill
   
6. SDMS Continues to Encourage ICAVL/ICAEL to Require Sonographer Credentialing
   
7. SDMS 2006 Annual Conference Registration Opening Soon!
   
8. Look for the new SDMS Product Catalog in your May/June issue of JDMS
   
9. Add SDMS to your "White List"
   
10. Thank You from Delgado Community College Sonography Program
    
11. ARDMS School Reporting Service Resumes
    
12. SDMS Fellow Offering Free Sonography Educational Materials
    
13. News & Notes
    
14. Important Dates
    

Our phone and fax numbers will remain the same.
Our street address will remain the same.
We'll be in the same building, on the same floor!

We are just relocating to the other end of the hallway for more office space to accomodate our staff growth, providing a more efficient environment to better serve our members.

Even though we aren't going very far, all of our computers, phones, and the SDMS website will be down on Thursday, May 18, and Friday, May 19.

SDMS is conducting a survey regarding the level of physician supervision present when performing five obstetrical sonography procedures. The survey will take less than 5 minutes to complete. Only US-based sonographers who are performing obstetrical examinations are asked to participate in the survey. The survey results will be presented to federal/state agencies and insurance carriers to ensure regulatory requirements match 'real-world' supervision realities.

Please complete this survey before 5:00 pm, June 16, 2006!

SDMS is pleased to announce that members can now get a discount on several sonography-related textbooks. Here are the titles you can select from:

• Diagnostic Ultrasound, 3rd Edition, 2-Volume Set By Carol M. Rumack, MD, Stephanie R. Wilson, MD, J. William Charboneau, MD, Jo-Ann Johnson, MD

• Clinical Guide to Ultrasonography By Charlotte Henningsen, MS, RT, RDMS, RVT

• Ultrasound Secrets By Vikram Dogra, MD, Deborah J. Rubens, MD

• Introduction to Vascular Ultrasonography, 5th Edition By William J. Zwiebel, MD, John Pellerito, MD

• Diagnostic Ultrasound, 7th Edition - Principles and Instruments By Frederick W. Kremkau, PhD

• Emergency Ultrasound - Principles and Practice By Romolo Joseph Gaspari, J. Christian Fox, Paul R. Sierzenski

• Pediatric Ultrasound - How, Why and When By Rose de Bruyn

• Peripheral Vascular Ultrasound, 2nd Edition - How, Why and When By Abigail Thrush, BSc Physics, MSc Medical Physics, Timothy Hartshorne, HND in Biology

• Ultrasound Physics and Instrumentation, 4th Edition By Wayne R. Hedrick, PhD, David L. Hykes, PhD, Dale E. Starchman, PhD

• Small Animal Diagnostic Ultrasound, 2nd Edition By Rose de Bruyn

Joan P. Baker, MSR, RDMS, RDCS, FSDMS will give a presentation entitled Ergonomic Hazards in Ultrasonographers through the OSHA Journal Club at the Department of Labor in Washington, DC. This presentation will be presented as a webcast to OSHA personnel nationwide at 11:00 am (EST) on Thursday, May 25, 2006.

The presentation will focus on familiarizing the participants with the problem of musculoskeletal injuries (MSI) in sonographers, update participants with current trends and statistics, identify MSI aggravating factors and illustrate prevention techniques. In addition, the “economics of ergonomics” will be discussed, where Baker will demonstrate how an ergonomically safe work station, equipment, and scanning techniques will help prevent costly medical care and career-ending injuries in the future.

“I think [this presentation] will help OSHA better understand the issues specific to sonography,” says Baker, “Everyone is entitled to a safe place to work.” OSHA is the federal administration that oversees workplace safety in all professions.

Baker advises that the two most important things a sonographer can do to prevent injury are educating themselves about the risk factors of musculoskeletal injuries, and that “sonographers need to be open-minded and willing to make changes to their work station and techniques.”

A bill was recently filed in the California legislature (Assembly) by Assemblyman Lieu. The bill's intent was to prevent the sale of ultrasound equipment to persons intending to use the equipment for entertainment use, such as actor Tom Cruise did to perform ultrasound examinations on his fiancée, Katie Holmes.

While the intent of this legislation was good, the bill as originally drafted would prohibit the sale or lease of ultrasound equipment to sonographers and sonographer educators. The SDMS Government Relations Committee responded to address these concerns in the bill, including dialogue with equipment manufacturers. An official letter from SDMS has been delivered to Assemblyman Lieu's office. It is possible that we may be seeing similar efforts in other states and want to make sure that the 'template' for this kind of activity reflects quality control standards as well as sonographer interests.

An interesting discussion in the President's forum, a part of the SDMS Discussion Forums, brought to light the fact that ICAVL/ICAEL only requires that the technical director of the lab be credentialed, not the actual sonographers performing the exams.

The SDMS has gone 'on record' with ICAVL requesting that consideration be given to changing their accreditation standards to require sonographer credentialing. In point of fact, that request has been made by SDMS of ICVAL on previous occasions. In contrast, both the AIUM and ACR accreditation processes require sonographer credentialing.

The SDMS would like to extend a big "thank you" to everyone that made donations of textbooks, videos, and other educational materials to help the faculty and students of the Delgado Community College Medical Sonography Program recover from the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

I am in the process of making all of the educational material I have acquired and developed over the past 20+ years in a sonography classroom available on my website. It's all free (except the books).

There are review questions (students can never get enough of these, right?), lecture notes and supporting materials, PowerPoint presentations, published articles, anatomy reviews (good one on neuro-anatomy and on carotid/cerebral circulation), etc. There are sections on Physics, OB/Gyn and Vascular. This is just my own dinky-little website, so viewing the pdf docs can be a bit tedious online, but everything can be downloaded as well. I figure that I have hundreds of hours of good quality sonography educational materials all in digital format, so why not share? Otherwise it will just sit here and gather digital dust.

Most material was up to date for academic year 2003 and a successful JRCDMS accreditation. I've got about 25% uploaded so far, more to come later as time permits. I have no idea if this stuff will be useful to students or teachers, but, hey, here it is.

www.jimbaun.com

Jim Baun, BS, RDMS, RVT, FSDMS San Francisco

The News & Notes column includes links to web-based news articles of interest to sonographers. To submit articles, send the URL to webmaster@sdms.org