I’m Heidi, a Screening Support Sonographer. As well as being a sonographer, an additional part of my role is to ensure pregnant women within our Trust get their screening scans within the correct timescales.  I work closely with the screening midwife and failsafe team to coordinate appointments and ensure we are meeting key performance indicators. Screening support sonographers (SSS) also assess images that sonographers take to ensure that they are working to a high standard. They feedback information from the national quality team, who statistically look at each sonographer’s performance when scanning Nuchal Translucencies (NTs). The SSS is also responsible for acting on updates from the National Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme.

I also coordinate the list of patients discussed at our weekly fetal anomaly Multi-Disciplinary Team.  Ensuring that each patient is discussed and followed up effectively.

I took part in one of ARC’s training courses on breaking unexpected news many years ago, which I found invaluable in my day-to-day practice.  This course gave professionals an insight into how parents react and interpret what is said, improving our understanding of what and how we say things during the scan.

During lockdown, I was isolating at home and took every opportunity to attend free online courses.  I discovered ARC’s case cafes which were a bit different, in that they gave all attendees the chance to discuss good and bad experiences, from the point of view of many different professions and Trusts throughout the country.

The face-to-face training all those years ago helped shape my attitude to “breaking bad news” and hopefully allowed me to come across more empathetically in my daily practice.  Only recently there has been a recognition that sonographers need formal training “explaining unexpected findings”.  ARC has always been instrumental in offering training to sonographers.

The monthly case café has allowed me to hear about what goes on in other Trusts, good and bad.  I strive to make things better for women and their partners in my Trust and these professional forums really help with that ambition.

I also organise short teaching sessions for our fetal medicine team and Jane [Fisher, ARC’s Director] has kindly talked in one of these sessions recently.  This raised awareness amongst sonographers and fetal medicine consultants of ARC’s work and reminded them that women can be signposted to this impartial service.