Echocardiography Department continues to set the standards

Morriston Hospital’s Echocardiography Department is going from strength to strength - and that’s official.

The department is currently celebrating renewed accreditation from the British Society of Echocardiography (BSE) following an inspection to ensure they are adhering to exacting rules.

Inspectors looked at a raft of processes including machines, operators, quality of reports and scope of echo procedures, as well as staff training, qualifications and accreditation.

The glowing report that followed should come as no surprise to those who know the service as it became one of the first in the UK to meet the BSE criteria when first introduced in 2007.

Cardiac ultrasound scanning – echocardiography, or simply echo – allows physicians to look at the size, structure and function of the heart, and is the most frequent specialist cardiac investigation.

It involves putting a small amount of gel on the patient’s chest, then placing a probe on the chest and obtaining moving images of the heart.

A routine full echo scan takes 40-45 minutes to complete.

When the service was established in Morriston in 1995 it consisted of just one room and two echo cardiographers.

Today, it has a team of 11 and three trainees, working out of seven rooms - three for outpatients and two for inpatients plus a dedicated scanning room in  the Acute Medical Unit and a room for the heart failure service in Gorseinon Hospital.

Patients can be scanned in the department or at their bedside.

The service has grown considerably over the years with heart disease, or its detection, becoming more prevalent with more patients coming through the service.

Ailsa Wallis, Service Manager for Clinical Physiology at Morriston Hospital, said: “Echo is one of the single most wanted tests in cardiology for a patient who comes into the hospital – we carry out around 14,000 scans every year.”

Ailsa welcomed the renewed accreditation.

She said: “This accreditation just shows the effort that all staff put into the service and the dedication that staff have for their patients’ needs.

“It’s a recognition of the high standards that we have achieved providing a high quality service – it’s a strict criteria of what we have to deliver to be able to hold this accreditation. 

“This May we welcomed Dr Charlotte Thornton, a newly appointed consultant with interest in cardiac imaging, who is already making a positive mark on standards in the department.

“This continued accreditation has been due to the hard work and commitment of the whole team, I feel privileged to work alongside this amazing team.”

Adam Fowell (left), head of echocardiography, said: “I’m very proud of our staff. We have an excellent team of cardiac physiologists behind our echo service. 

“Now our service is busier than ever but we have not only maintained high standards through this period, we have more and more physiologists in advanced echo procedures.”

Cardiac consultant, Dr Adrian Ionescu, said: “We were the first in the UK to be accredited with the new more rigorous rules - we revised countless versions proposed by the BSE, and then they administered us the procedure for accreditation as a ‘test case’. 

“We have been re-accredited with flying colours ever since, and now we hold accreditation for all the classes of echo, and we are proud of that, as it’s not such a commonly-bestowed mark of quality and achievement.”
 

Main picture caption from left to right: Joanna Etheridge, Luke Williams, Sophie Jones, Karen Wood (echo co-ordinator), Daniel Thrift, Kim Medwell, Julie Jones, Ailsa Wallis (Head of Clinical Physiology), Sarah Patterson, Adam Fowell (Head of Echocardiography), Daniel Benjamin and Laura Humphreys. All are highly specialist echocardiographers unless otherwise stated.