If you are interested in finding out about the career of Prenatal Tech or Prenatal Technician, you’ve come to the right place! Our site is dedicated to explaining this career, including the different ways you can go about studying for this job, as well as the issues surrounding licensing and certification.
What is a Prenatal Tech?
A prenatal technician is simply an ultrasound technician who has chosen to specialize in a certain area, in this case the area of OB/GYN ultrasound. Prenatal techs can be found working mainly in obstetric and obstetrics/gynecology offices. It is common for people who are not familiar with the job to think that it has something to do with babies, but that is not really the case. These technicians don’t really get to interact with babies very much, but rather, they spend their time working with pregnant women. When you break it down Pre Natal means Before Birth, so if you are looking for a career that allows you to tend to babies, you would be looking at a postnatal career such as neonatal nurse.
What is an Ultrasound Technician?
An ultrasound tech is a person who operates an ultrasound machine or sonograph in order to create an image of the interior structures of a patient’s body. You can think of it as being similar to an x-ray, but whereas an x-ray is made with radiation (which can be dangerous at high levels), ultrasound is accomplished using sound waves, and is generally considered to be completely safe. The technician is trained at a prenatal tech school or at a standard ultrasound program. These programs are usually general in nature, and prepare their graduates to do both abdominal and OBGYN ultrasounds. Some programs will let you choose to specialize in one of these areas while you are still in training, but most programs will cover both areas and let the students choose to specialize AFTER they have their credential.
Does Becoming an Ultrasound Tech Require a License?
As of the writing of this article in June 2011, only two states require sonographers to be licensed. Those states are New Mexico and Oregon. However, those who are considering going into this field should know that both of those states passed the laws requiring licensure in 2009, and it is believed that many more states will be following suit over the next 10 years or so, so it is possible that you would need a license in your state by the time you have graduated, or at some point in the future. Each state makes and enforces its own laws, which only adds to the difficulty of keeping track of any changes in the law, so if you are concerned about this issue, you can contact your state’s board of medical licensing (or whichever body regulates the licensing of medical careers in your state) to see if any requirements have been added, or if any are planned. Apart from the issue of licensing, there is the issue of certification, which is not the same as a license. The requirements for certification in this career are complex and confusing, so we will attempt to make it as clear as possible.
Accredited Ultrasound Schools
All schools that offer training in ultrasound will fall into one of two categories: they will either be accredited or they will not. This is a tricky point, so it is worth taking your time to understand it. According to the body that certifies and registers ultrasound technicians, the ARDMS (American Registry for Diagnostic Medical Sonography), you will need to sit for two different exams in order to become a certified prenatal tech. You will need to pass both the Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer (RDMS) exam, as well as the Obstetrics and Gynecology Specialty Exam in order to be certified to do OBGYN ultrasounds. In order to sit for those exams, you MUST have graduated from an accredited school, OR if you have graduated from a school that is not accredited, you need to have either one full year of paid working experience as an ultrasound tech OR a bachelor’s degree in vascular technology or sonography. The difficulty comes in getting that one year of full time work. Many (or even most) employers will simply not hire you to do ultrasound work until after you are certified by the ARDMS, so it is very difficult if not impossible to get the required year of full time work as an unregistered and non-certified ultrasound tech. In order to be accredited by CAAHEP (the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs), an ultrasound program must be a two year program, and it must consist of both didactic training (education in the fundamentals of ultrasound and other academic studies) and clinical training (actual practice using a machine on a patient in a clinical setting). If your program is not two years long, then it will not fulfill the requirements for you to take the ARDMS certification exam! If you want to avoid any future headaches or hassles getting your certification, it will help if you make sure that the program you register for is accredited by CAAHEP.
