It has been an absolute pleasure to teach our MSc students with a hands-on practical session on echocardiography. My students had the opportunity to learn in small group sessions facilitated by expert echocardiographers and obtain important views of the heart’s structure and function using simple, bedside, non-invasive ultrasound. I hope that this fully immersive experience will catalyse the next generation of clinical, academic and industry cardiac imagers. We are especially very grateful to our industry colleagues who provided us with several echocardiography machines and our KCL cardiology society medical students who volunteered themselves to be scanned!
Dr Sohaib Nazir, Clinical Senior Lecturer, School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King's College London.
07 February 2024
Students gain hands-on experience of heart imaging
Healthcare Technologies MSc students gain hands-on experience of ultrasound techniques at St Thomas’ Hospital.
Healthcare Technologies MSc students gain hands-on experience in ultrasound techniques at St Thomas’ Hospital.
The group, who are studying at the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences spent the day learning about the clinical applications of medical imaging as part of a special event designed to translate their studies into real-world practice.
This practical and immersive teaching opportunity was made possible thanks to volunteer medical students from King’s Medical School.
The volunteers spent their day having ultrasound jelly applied to them before being repeatedly scanned using Echo Machines.
Echo probes can non-invasively scan a patient’s heart using high-frequency soundwaves that bounce back from different parts of the body to the probe where they can be used to produce visual echocardiogram images.
The opportunity was created by Dr Sohaib Nazir to provide students with a hands-on and immersive experience in using medical devices at the patient bedside.
Developing a detailed understanding of medical device use in clinical settings is a crucial part of student education. It allows students to more fully understand the applications of their research and how future devices they'll go on to develop will impact patient care and outcomes.
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Clinical Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist