Here is informatioin I have provided befroe hope it helps

Subject: MSI


This may help you also with the scan per day

you can see the table here:
http://www.uams.edu/chrp/sonography/DMS%20Professional/CasesPerDay&Hour.asp

The table basically shows that sonographers spend about 45 minutes per case
in all

In a poor ergonomics environment it may not be safe to do 1 ultrasound study
in a good environment it may be safe to do ten times that. What is more
important is transducer time.


I get asked this question every week so I have a standard reply which is
listed below.

 It is transducer time not the number of patients that must be considered
with ultrasound. Recovery time is needed for the muscles and tendons. This
is why two machines and three sonographers works well, if handled correctly
there is time for recovery as the sonographers rotate doing cases and
keeping the equipment running. Equipment not being used is a loss of
resource as well as loss of employees to L & I claims is a loss of resource.

The following information was collected from the largest demographic survey
of sonographers ever done, and is considered a highly reliable source given
the survey response rate. (10,000 + sonographers responded to the
Sonographer Benchmark study by SDMS and the SDMS Foundation)

Question: How many patients do you personally scan a day?

All responses:
1-5 11.0%
6-10 51.2%
11-15 30.8%
16-20 5.9%
20+ 1.1%

Responses for Hospital Inpatient
1-5 9.0%
6-10 55.2%
11-15 30.9%
16-20 4.1%
20+ 0.8%

Responses for Physician Office
1-5 11.5%
6-10 45.6%
11-15 32.5%
16-20 8.8%
20+ 1.6%

Responses for Hospital Outpatient
1-5 10.9%
6-10 51.6%
11-15 31.0%
16-20 5.6%
20+ 0.9%

> Responses for Ob/GYN
> 1-5 8.1%
> 6-10 45.3%
> 11-15 37.8%
> 16-20 7.5%
> 20+ 1.3%.
>
> Responses for Abdomen
> 1-5 8.7%
> 6-10 46.8%
> 11-15 36.8%
> 16-20 6.5%
> 20+ 1.2%


Responses for Echocardiography
1-5 14.1%
6-10 62.6%
11-15 19.6%
16-20 2.9%
20+ 0.8%


Responses for Vascular
1-5 9.8%
6-10 51.5%
11-15 32.3%
16-20 5.2%
20+ 1.1%

The most important issue is the conditions that you perform ultrasound
under, as far as tables, chairs, support cushions, type of equipment, its
age and model. These factors are as important and in some cases more
important and may have more to do with injury than the head count of
patients. In other words it may be dangerous to do 2 patients in poor
ergonomic conditions and safe to do 10 in good ergonomic conditions.

 You also need to consider the type of studies you do and the amount of time
allotted on the schedule for each type of study. By this I mean are you
doing high risk OB or cardiac only or vascular or a lot of TV scans? These
are long detailed studies (except TV) involving a lot of static positioning.
Are you doing a lot of 2nd trimester fetal surveys or multiple pregnancy
cases. How much time is allowed not only for the study but between the
studies for muscle recovery. May be you are doing average OB patients (not
high risk) this may make a difference if the other ergonomic conditions are
good.

 It is also important to note that the above figures from the survey have
produced a work force 84% of which is scanning in pain and 20% of those are
career ending.This means that these numbers may be too high to prevent or
reduce injury and would not be the recommended numbers.

 I would also recommend you go to our web site at www.soundergonomics.com
and put the cursor over "publications" click on the paper by Daniel Habes
who is from NIOSH and this paper was the result of a NIOSH survey done on
an OB lab this may be of assistance to you. Also tables, chairs and
cushions that I refer to are available under products on our web site.

 ASE did a study and their results provided the following-: these are echoes
only
0-5 22%
5-10 65%
11-15 11%
ASE sonographer survey 2001 1161 surveys returned, 2,500 mailed

Cardiology Today did a study which showed that when the total number of
studies done per day increases, so does the prevalence of musculoskeletal
discomfort. When the number of studies per day is coupled with the length of
time per study, the ratio increases even further. This well written
interesting paper can be found on our web site click on the icon
publications and scroll down to the publication.

225 responses mean age 42.9 years
64% respondents scanning more than 10 years
82% reported some level of discomfort
67% reported major or disabling discomfort.

I have cardiac data that shows that 62% of cardiac sonographers do 5-10
echoes a day and that is on a schedule of 28% having 30 mins per case 30%
having 45 minutes per case and 32% having an hour per case. Complete echoes
per day

The 1997 SDMS study on MSI showed that the average time for an echo was
36.07 minutes and 40.15 minutes for vascular studies.

Finally using the AHRA data collected in 1992 and 1995 showed that each
sonographer in an average size hospital performs 1522 scans per year in 1992
and 1709.5 scans per year in 1995 both in the same 8 hour day (does not
include on-call) According to the SDMS benchmark study this number had
increased to 2740.5 cases per year per sonographer in 2000. This represents
a 55.5% increase over this 8 year period. Small wonder we hear more
complaints and increased incidence of scanning in pain and occupational
injury in sonographers.

I hope this data provides you with usable numbers to point out to your
management that these through put numbers are producing injury especially in
a poorly designed lab from an ergonomic stand point.


If I can be of further assistance don't hesitate to contact me my email
address is [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jill Myers" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 10:32 AM
Subject: studies per tech daily


> Does anyone know of anything published that documents the recommended
> daily average of vascular studies that would be performed by one RVT
> during
> an 8 hour day?
>
> Thanks!
> Jill Myers
>
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