By Tiny Tickers’ Head of Training, Anne Rhodes
As Head of Training for Tiny Tickers, my focus is mainly on delivering training to sonographers and other health professionals that provide obstetric scans. The aim of this is to give health professionals the confidence, knowledge and skills to better spot heart defects during pregnancy screening thus improving the antenatal detection rate of Congenital Heart Disease. The training focuses upon the normal fetal heart, it’s structure and circulatory system and the views to be obtained at the 20-week anatomy scan. We also touch upon some of the more common cardiac anomalies and how to recognise them.
Sonographers are often curious about what happens to these babies once they are born. In fact, most often, once the patient has been referred by the sonographer to the specialist cardiac team, the sonographer never gets to find out about that patient’s journey or the outcome.
At Tiny Tickers we also support cardiac nurse specialists. From the cardiac liaison nurse specialists who attend the antenatal diagnosis appointments through to the cardiac nurses caring for these children and their families on the wards and afterwards. These conditions often mean that the children and their families require lifelong follow-up and the cardiac team build good relationships with the families they care for.
With this in mind, I decided to create a series of condition specific webinars for UK health professionals.
They cover the incidence of the anomaly, the cause and any associations, the anatomical abnormality, and how a diagnosis can be made either in the antenatal or the postnatal period. They go on to examine the signs and symptoms, the different treatments and surgeries available, and the prognosis.
We have teamed up with Gill McBurney, a cardiac liaison nurse specialist who will be delivering these webinars with us.
They will be live presentations with the opportunity to ask any questions at the end of the session. To sign up for the dates below click here. Please note that you must use your NHS professional email address as these webinars are for UK health professionals only.
- June 28th (18:30-19:30) – Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome
- July 5th (18:30-19:30) – Atrioventricular Septal Defect
We welcome all sonographers, cardiac nurses and doctors who wish to know more about specific conditions or just have a refresher and get to connect with our little charity.
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