EchoMentor creates a new wave of sonographers

An online community for sonographers channels the professional excellence and passion that is a hallmark of RIT’s diagnostic medical sonography program.

Hayley Bartkus ’17 (diagnostic medical sonography) and Christina Werth ’13 (diagnostic medical sonography) created EchoMentor as an educational platform for healthcare professionals working in sonography or ultrasound, a medical imaging method that uses sound waves to peer inside the body.

EchoMentor is an evolving resource for continuing education, mentorship, professional development, and patient-focused case studies.

It launched last spring with Bartkus teaching “Approaching Appendicitis.” New content this fall included her class on kidney transplants, and Werth’s session on fetal skeletal dysplasia. Colleague Samantha Grimsley ’15 (diagnostic medical sonography), a vascular sonographer at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, taught a third class on subclavian steal syndrome, a condition in which the subclavian artery narrows and causes blood flow reversal in the vertebral artery.

Courses developed for EchoMentor are accredited by the American Society of Radiologic Technologists and satisfy continuing medical education requirements of the American Registry of Diagnostic Medical Sonographers and the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists.

EchoMentor grew from the co-founders’ experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, when they worked together in high-risk maternal fetal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. They saw first-hand the need to promote the important—yet often overlooked—role sonography plays in healthcare, said Bartkus, director of the diagnostic medical sonography program at Johns Hopkins Schools of Medical Imaging and host of the ultrasound podcast 256 Shades of Gray.

EchoMentor represents a grassroots effort to bring awareness and visibility to a profession that emerged alongside technological advances in the latter part of the 20th century.

“One of the gaps we want to fill with EchoMentor is helping sonographers learn how they can further their careers without leaving the field,” said Werth, an echosonographer at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Opportunities are unclear because those paths aren’t yet well forged.”

As an online platform, EchoMentor can work toward establishing professional representation. To Bartkus, that means being part of the conversation around current issues facing the medical field, such as gender affirming care and the Black maternal health crisis.

“EchoMentor is meant to empower other sonographers to get excited and motivated about these things, too,” Bartkus said. “It’s how they can make a change in the field and in the world because sonography is life-saving healthcare.”

The name of their organization underscores the importance of mentorship in the niche ultrasound field, said Werth, who mentored both Bartkus and Grimsley. EchoMentor will expand to include a mentorship program with a lineage that traces back to Hamad Ghazle, director of RIT’s diagnostic medical sonography program and an influential figure in the field.

In many ways, EchoMentor is a conduit for sharing Ghazle’s legacy in ultrasound education and imparting his high level of excellence and joy for sonography, Bartkus said.

Graduates from the RIT program have a reputation for growing in their positions and embodying an inclusive, extra quality that lifts up the people around them.

“They want to do more than the bare minimum of scanning patients,” Werth said. “They want to be involved in education and research, mentorship opportunities, patientcare improvement, and quality projects.”

This is where EchoMentor comes in as a resource for lifelong learning that furthers the profession and helps patients.

“We learned from our time at RIT that when you’re passionate about what you do, that passion trickles into all areas of your life and can make for a joyful career,” Werth said.