Sonographer
Gretchen Prine, sonographer > Good Samaritan Hospital
By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be
Gretchen Prine said she had always been attracted to the medical profession ever since she was a little girl.
“I had an X-ray and that just fascinated me. So, from that time, that was what I wanted to do,” she said.
Prine attended Sinclair Community College and graduated with an associate degree in Radiology. She then took X-rays at Good Samaritan Hospital for 20 years before deciding that she needed a change.
“I was not really tired of doing X-ray but I wanted more of a challenge in my life. I felt I was stagnating and not using my brain by doing the same thing all the time.”
She enrolled in Kettering College of Medical Arts and graduated with an associate degree in Ultrasound — a procedure that uses high-frequency sound waves to create visual images of organs, blood flow or tissues in the body.
Prine currently works as a sonographer at Good Samaritan where she faces busy days at work.
“We have outpatients that come in, we have in-house patients that come down from the floor and we have emergency room patients that can get added on at any time of the day,” she said.
Although she works a normal day shift, other sonographers work various shifts and weekends.
She said that hospitals are just one of many places that a sonographer can find work.
“Some (obstetrics) doctors have (a machine), some neurology doctors have a dedicated ultrasound person in their office.”
Other places besides hospitals include the wave of outpatient care centers being built around the area and working for yourself.
“You can actually buy your own ultrasound machine and go mobile with it and go to nursing homes if you want,” she said.
She described a normal day as making sure the machines are running correctly and are clean, checking linen supplies — sonographers use a lot of towels, washcloths and sheets — and spending a lot of time on the computer reviewing the images and arranging for patient billing.
“We also fill out worksheets with every study to give the radiologist an idea of what we see on the ultrasound,” she explained. She added that one critical part of her job is making sure that the images that the radiologist sees are the best available.
“The radiologist can only go on the pictures that I take. I see the entire exam but I am only taking certain pictures so I have to make sure that my pictures are good enough that the radiologist is going to be able to pick out what is going on. It can be tough.”
There are four modalities to ultrasound: abdomen; OB; echocardiograms; and vascular. She added that Kettering College is the only school in the area and one of the few that trains the student in all four modalities — most require students to choose two.
Students quickly become familiar with the equipment and procedures through their clinical experience.
“You do on-the-job training. You are in the hospital actually scanning patients three days a week (under the supervision of a sonographer) and you go to school two days a week,” she explained.
For students that might be considering the profession, she recommends studying chemistry, physics, anatomy, physiology and math.
“You need to have a good, strong math background,” she said.
