Are you a practising sonographer? Do you recognise any of the following:

• A pregnant woman and her partner get really angry with you because the local protocol precludes scanning for fetal sexing; then you discover they’ve lost a child to a sex-linked condition.
• A female patient demands a chaperone for the trans-vaginal ultrasound examination you feel is necessary to make a full assessment of her pelvic structures; there’s no-one available and the local protocol doesn’t support the need for a chaperone where both patient and sonographer are the same sex.
• You are scanning a fourteen year old female with acute abdominal pain and clinical suspicion of an ectopic pregnancy when the girl’s accompanying mother remarks ‘I didn’t know you could see appendicitis on a scan’.

 
The above are just a few examples of the ‘routine’ ethical dilemmas and questions that sonographers face in their working lives. This course will help you find a way through such issues and enable both you and your patients/clients to feel that the scan experience was as good as it could be.