Learning ultrasound is not brain surgery. It is probably even easier than sorting out how to use Wolfram Alpha to calculate the grade of a hill.
Ultrasound enlightenment is elusive but you can get there. There is a Budda in your mirror and there is an ultrasound pro in there as well. Chant your chants Princess Amber. Recite your mantras Baby Pearl. Maybe even put on black stretchy pants and do some sweaty yoga. You can get there.
Unfortunately, neither the ultrasound sales person or the instructor at the short course told you how to get there or that the road will be difficult. Nobody tells you that you will miss lesions and kill animals. Nobody tells you that pet owners will become irate with you for missing lesions and killing their animals. The animals will also be unhappy with you for missing lesions but they dont tell you that either.
How long will it take to reach enlightenment? Definately longer than a weekend course. Definitely longer than an ultrasound block in senior year. To give you some perspective on the journey this is about what it looks like for a radiology resident:
- Year 1: You know nothing about ultrasound but you read a lot so you think you know a lot. Soon you realize that what they write in the books does not look at all like what you see in the animals. Anything can look like everything with ultrasound and the real trick is finding the lesion in the first place. Your mentor scans everything because they know you know nothing. You feel stupid.
- Year 2: Somewhere between missing duodenal ulcers and sending non-obstructed dogs with garbage gut to surgery you start to sort things out. You are ready to sprout wings (bok bok) but your mentor still scans everything because you are getting cocky and they know you are not yet 100%. Of course, they are right and they find all sorts of things you missed. You feel stupid.
- Year 3: After doing several scans a day for several years under the watchful eye of your mentor you really do start to know something. Missing lesions is a rarity. You feel good. Spring is in the air. Smell the daisies resident – you will feel stupid again. Just wait.
- Year 4: You pass boards and now you have some letters behind your name. However, without the radiology department to run to if you get in over your head you once again feel stupid. You are working at a referral hospital where the internists and surgeons are more than happy to tell you that you are stupid if you miss a lesion. Unfortunately, you still miss things every once in a while.
- Year 5: Well, it only took 5 years to get there but you finally reach enlightenment.
“What does ultrasound enlightenment feel like?” you ask. How do you know when you have arrived at that holy place? You will know you are there when you can look at any case and confidently say one of 4 things after every scan:
- I know what that is.
- I’m not sure what that is but it’s gotta be bad. Go to surgery or go to heaven.
- This one is normal.
- That is an interesting case. Let me know what happens with that one. (Translation: I have not clue and feel stupid.)
Does it really take five years? *
Maybe not five but it will take a few years and scanning many many cases. Unfortunately, I don’t have any great suggestions about how to speed up the process. Short courses wont do it. Teleradiology certainly is not the answer. The real question is how do you learn something that relies on you not missing things when there is no way to know what you are missing?
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*A google search for attaining enlightenment offered the folllowing as an alternative. This route seems very plausible. If I were starting out again, I might try this. If you do, let me know how it goes. “Balancing, Cleansing and Integrating Higher Dimensional Electro-Magnetic Energies in One’s Activated and Expanded Earthly Spirit Light Body using Advanced Forgiveness Techniques. Teaching and Healing of Others so that the Golden Spheres, or Strings, of Electro-Magnetic Energies Flow Through One’s Body to Properly Help and Heal Others, a Process Which Also Expands One’s Own Earthly Spirit Light Body.”
