Delivering unexpected pregnancy news identified via ultrasound: BBC Breakfast News clip

The importance of good communication when telling expectant parents that an unexpected finding has been identified during a #pregnancy scan cannot be overestimated, but up until now, there has been no agreement on the words and behaviours a sonographer should use. Our consensus guidelines meet this need and they are published today.
The link to the summary article is: doi.org/10.117...
The link to the full guidelines is: doi.org/10.551...
Thanks so much to @tinytickers @miscarriageassociation @sandscharity @downs_syndrome_association and everyone who contributed to and supported this work.

[@colsylvester639]

Hi Dr. Johnson. This comment isn't an attack on you or any of the interviewees but more on the style of how the interview was performed. I'd like to know your professional thoughts. We've communicated before by the way via your website after a webinar through BMUS. Hello again.
I know that some Sonographers require tutoring in breaking news, and I'm glad that the Sonographer interviewed actually mentioned that there hasn't been a go-to document in the past, but I'm a little dismayed that the BBC decided to start the discussion with a terrible and personally tragic account without setting the scene first...a few people may have been significantly triggered by that account and may have not felt comfortable continuing with the interview and that is not the purpose of the interview. It is an incredibly difficult thing to do as a Sonographer, breaking devastating news and I absolutely acknowledge that it isn't done well sometimes. None of us go to work wanting to ruin someones experience but the interview wasn't balanced enough, didn't take in to account the very many examples where it is done well, and I felt personally that Sonographers were portrayed more like some sort of breed of robots that need reprogramming with human traits, than very experienced and qualified caring people with our own healthcare stories many of them bad. That's pretty insulting to someone like me that strives to not make the bad news experience any worse. Tiny tickers is an excellent charity and I've worked with them before. As a professional group Sonographers don't do a great job of representing ourselves to the wider public, mostly because we are exhausted, but I'd like to try and help change that.

[@JudithJohnsonphd]

Thanks Col, for sharing your thoughts. The piece certainly isn’t balanced- I don’t think things in the media generally are ;-) I think it was designed to highlight the need for more support for sonographers rather than attack them- but I can certainly see how it may have felt that way. My hope is that it might have highlighted how challenging this is to do for a job - how draining it can be and how sonographers deserve better. Too often I’ve been told it’s not important, and I felt this piece helped to bust that myth! Now it’s been put on people’s agendas, I hope the public is more aware of the importance of the clinical work sonographers do and I hope that support can be built into sonographers’ daily work. It’s not acceptable to me that sonographers have to do all their CPD during evenings and weekends. I hope that the emotional labour of the discipline can be recognised and job design shifted, accordingly. Have a good bank holiday weekend! :)

[@colsylvester639]

@@JudithJohnsonphd it's correct that most sonographers don't get protected study time in fact many radiographers don't, yet midwives and nurses are more likely to. As a former TUIR rep for my union it was a road to nowhere trying to secure study time. The more a profession is in shortage and the greater the workload, the less forward thinking management side seem to be. Thanks for the reply BTW and have a restful weekend and Bank Holiday too.

[@JudithJohnsonphd]

@@colsylvester639 hopefully- this can still change. It’s important, in my view, for the long term sustainability of the discipline.

[@colsylvester639]

@@JudithJohnsonphd you have my agreement there. Unfortunately many services are under considerable pressure to perform obstetric and non-obstetric ultrasound at pace and volume while simultaneously maintaining and elevating quality outcomes in terms of patient satisfaction, experience and diagnostic accuracy, with staff shortages. Departments are often from my experience, in a position where they have to be more reactive than they'd like and far less proactive than they'd aspire toward. Unfortunately politics (both within health and within government) and funding has a place in this discussion. Ultimately then the "soft" metric outcomes like the video covers are also tackled in a reactive manner in response to feedback and complaints. It could be so much better but until training, CPD and patient experience are viewed with as much importance as FASP outcomes, diagnostic accuracy and diagnostic wait breeches, discipline sustainability will be uneven.