Pros
Caring for patients and seeing them often during their pregnancies was rewarding. I enjoyed caring for high-risk obstetric patients. My fellow sonographers were hardworking, supportive, and did their best to provide excellent patient care despite difficult circumstances
Cons
The workplace culture felt driven more by productivity and profit than by employee well-being. Sonographers repeatedly raised concerns about heavy scanning volumes, inadequate scheduling, and the physical demands of the job, particularly regarding shoulder and repetitive strain injuries. In my experience, you should expect to be injured while working here and plan accordingly. Once an injury occurs, you will likely need to use your own time to manage it, and there is very little help or direction from leadership on how to navigate the process.
Chronic understaffing created frequent stress and increased workloads for the remaining staff. Patients also experienced long wait times because of the volume of work being pushed through the department. It was common to scan 15–18 patients a day per sonographer including fetal echoes, with most being anatomy scans on high-BMI patients, which added to the physical strain and stress of the day. The providers are quick to add on patients, without concern for the sonographers already high patient loads.
Time off was also difficult to use, with PTO requests often denied because of staffing shortages, making it challenging to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Leadership would benefit from listening more closely to their sonographers as they are the employees who understand the physical demands of sonography. Investing in appropriate staffing, realistic scheduling, and injury prevention would improve both employee satisfaction and patient care.
