Bad at ultrasound/TTE

[mika2234]

Hi!

I am a new cardiology fellow and i am running into a bit of a conundrum. I am not naturally good at ultrasound/TTE. I have noticed that my cofellows are much better than I am, and that this is a skill i do not naturally possess. Question is:

1) can i improve with practice?
2) will this hinder my cath/TEE skills?

Thanks for any insight. Hopefully there are others who have been in this situation

Thanks!!

Mika

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[timpview]

1. Are you talking about like actuAlly doing the echo? Of course you could improve but who cares. it really doesn’t matter. I Guess I had to grab a subcostal as a fellow a couple times but outside of that I’ll never actually DO an echo the rest of my career

2. no. Other than your lack of confidence holding u back. Chin up.

 

[SpyGuy]

Hi!

I am a new cardiology fellow and i am running into a bit of a conundrum. I am not naturally good at ultrasound/TTE. I have noticed that my cofellows are much better than I am, and that this is a skill i do not naturally possess. Question is:

1) can i improve with practice?
2) will this hinder my cath/TEE skills?

Thanks for any insight. Hopefully there are others who have been in this situation

Thanks!!

Mika

You'll be Fine. Don't worry. Echo is my weakest too out of all Cardiology. Just make sure you can get some of the 4 views needed to make any emergent diagnoses that would change management. Otherwise knowing how to read is more important, IMO in this day and age.

Despite above, I am great at TEE (and I wanna say Cath too but I don't want to get ahead of myself). TEE is fun and a whole other ballgame, you'll see. Same for cath, no relation to echo, and is a whole other world to learn (steep learning curve too mind you but once you get the hang of it you'll be grand.)

Practice does help though, for everything.
Good luck and don't fret!

 

[blahblah56]

Question for you all, are you expected to be able to perform a full study on your own, including all the measurements? And for level 2 (150 scans performed), are they required to be full studies?

 

[aafisahar]

Question for you all, are you expected to be able to perform a full study on your own, including all the measurements? And for level 2 (150 scans performed), are they required to be full studies?

I think the dirty secret is that no one scans 150 people. I've heard that if a probe is in the room with the patient, you can count it as a scan.

 

[timpview]

I think I put my hand on the probe for 10-20 (at most) just to get a few images. Zero full scans for me. But my program didn’t care.