Temple College is now accepting applicants for its new health profession program in Diagnostic Medical Sonography, with classes scheduled to begin in the fall.

In Central Texas there is a 27 percent need for sonographers that won’t be filled over the next five years, said Steve Trawick, chairman of TC’s Diagnostic Medical Sonography program.

“Every clinical site I’ve visited is understaffed,” he said.

Prospective students are people who have a strong desire to work with very ill people and must be emotionally ready to handle it. Trawick said.

When most people think of ultrasound, Trawick said, it’s of prospective parents getting the first picture of their unborn baby - a pink or blue bow fantasy.

“No doctor orders an ultrasound because they think you’re happy, healthy or normal,” he said. “They order it because they think something is wrong.”

The student needs to be mature enough to handle life and death on a daily basis, Trawick said.

Nationwide, it’s a struggle to recruit qualified sonographers, said Wayne Stockburger, assistant executive director at Scott & White clinic departments of radiology and orthopedics.

“We have been looking at this for several years,” Stockburger said.

A program training local students will be a huge help, he said.

Trawick came to Temple after setting up a baccalaureate sonography program at Mountain State University in West Virginia. Before that he had been in Boston.

Trawick said he’s where he wants to be.

“I love to see that light go on above a student’s head when they get it, finally,” he said.

It takes a special person to be able to read an ultrasound, he said. There is a need to be able to look at a two-dimensional picture and be able to see it in three or four dimension in their head.

“It’s an innate ability and not everyone has it,” Trawick said.

As with other medical fields, staying on top of technical advances requires continuing education. Trawick said he takes tests about every two months to maintain his credentials.

When Trawick entered the field, ultrasounds were black dots on a white background or white dots on a black background. Now it’s 265 shades of gray.

Over the years, he said, imaging has evolved from being able to only identify things an inch or larger, to measuring items the size of a hair.

Today, many surgical procedures and biopsies require the use of ultrasound - cyst aspirations, pulling fluid off the lung and out of the abdomen. Ultrasound is used with transplant surgery to make sure blood is flowing well.

HIFU, a high intensity focused ultrasound that heats and destroys tissue, is a new procedure that is gaining ground, Trawick said.

In the United States HIFU is being used to treat prostate cancer, but Trawick believes students in TC’s DMS program will be using the procedure on a daily basis in the next 10 to 15 years.

If a person gets out of the program and doesn’t update their education for two years they’ll be five years behind technology, he said.

Every nine months, equipment will include new technology and the practitioner needs to modify their technique and talent to keep up, Trawick said.

On the horizon, there’s been work on the development of muscular/skeletal ultrasound, Stockburger said.

When training began in ultrasound, it took six months of training, now it requires two years, he said.

It took years to build ultrasound literature and a database that would show what the different disease process would look like at different stages, Trawick said.

In a semester the student will learn what 400 diseases and processes look like in the abdomen and pelvis, not including obstetrics, and the student will need to learn the symptoms, signs and stages of the disease.

“It’s a matter of pattern recognition … it’s just that there are thousands of patterns on multiple plains,” Trawick said. “That comes with time.”

The TC degree in Diagnostic Medical Sonography includes 50 hours in core sonography courses and 22 hours of prerequisites and corequisites.

The 14 hours of prerequisites, required before admission into the program, include college algebra, elementary physics, composition and anatomy and physiology I.

The corequisites, required before completing the program, can be done online, because the ultrasound program is time intensive- 24 hours a week at a clinical site and 14 to 16 hours of lecture and lab at the college. A third physics course is now required.

During clinical training, students will work with preceptors who will familiarize the student with the process they are being taught in school.

“I give the piano lesson here - they go out and practice and then they come back and show me what they can do,” Trawick said.

As a staff of one, Trawick said he will teach every class before handing off any courses as personnel is added.

There are plans to grow the program and add more specialties, he said.

The program will be housed in the Health Science Center and will use equipment donated by Scott & White and Providence Hospital. Scott & White is funding the program until the Legislature appropriates the money.

Those interested in the program will have to attend an information session before their application will be accepted.

For information or to schedule a session, call Mary Ann Ray at 298-8678.