With the growing demand for veterinary services—and many vet hospitals being fully booked—many vets are delegating tasks to skilled veterinary technicians when possible. But is an ultrasound something that can be delegated to vet techs?
Here, we’ll cover what separates the duties of a veterinarian and a veterinary technician, and how that applies to performing ultrasounds on companion animals.
Which Duties Can a Vet Tech Legally Perform?
Credentialing, as well as the laws and rules governing what veterinary technicians can or cannot do, vary widely from state to state. So, it’s important to check your state’s rules and regulations for specifics.
However, as a general overview, trained technicians are allowed to perform many of the same duties that veterinarians perform. But they must operate under the supervision of a licensed veterinarian.
There are a few things that vet techs aren’t legally able to do, though. This includes making a diagnosis, prescribing treatments and diagnostic tests, performing surgery, and giving a prognosis.
How Do a Vet Tech’s Training and Legal Restrictions Apply to Performing an Ultrasound?
With the above rules in mind, think about what’s involved in an ultrasound study.
The person performing the study must be familiar with the ultrasound machine and how to use the controls to operate it. They must know how to find the organs/anatomic structures of interest and take the correct views (images and videos) of those structures, along with any relevant measurements.
So far, all of these tasks are something a vet tech could learn how to do.
Although it can take time to learn and practice ultrasound technique, vet techs are smart and educated, and capable of doing many of the challenging tasks a veterinary hospital requires on a daily basis.
So, given the right training and opportunities to hone their skills, it stands to reason that many vet techs could be taught to perform ultrasound studies.
What About Interpreting the Images?
The tricky part comes in when it’s time to interpret the images or videos that were captured during an ultrasound study.
Even though a highly trained and experienced vet tech will probably understand the significance of what they are seeing on an ultrasound study, there are legal limitations to what a vet tech can do with that information.
Interpreting the images would involve making a diagnosis (or at least a diagnostic rule out list) and possibly giving a prognosis. Plus, based on that information, prescribing treatments or additional diagnostic tests (such as performing an FNA or obtaining a biopsy) could be the next step.
Those things would fall into the realm of services limited to a licensed veterinarian.
So, a vet tech could perform the ultrasound study and capture images. But it would be up to a veterinarian to interpret the study.
In many ways, this is very similar to how x-ray studies are already performed in veterinary medicine. It’s also similar to the way ultrasound techs operate in human medicine.
So, it’s not a stretch to imagine a similar system could work for ultrasound studies in vet med.
Potential Pitfalls to Consider
With ultrasound studies, there is value in someone being able to interpret the studies in real-time.
For example, if a mass is noted in the liver, a veterinarian might recommend an FNA of the mass. However, a vet tech wouldn’t necessarily be able to prescribe this next step.
Also, certain findings may require veterinary knowledge to put into context and alter the course of the scan. One example is finding a splenic mass, which might prompt a veterinarian to also look and see if a right atrial mass is present.
One solution is to have veterinarians present (or at least be accessible for questions) during the study. That way, additional views, and procedures could be performed as needed.
However, even veterinarians who are new to ultrasound themselves may run into shortcomings with image interpretation. So, there may be limitations no matter who is performing the study, until a person gains years of practice.
A good place to start is to have whoever is performing the study—whether it’s a vet or a vet tech—use a standardized list of views to obtain. Then those views can be sent to a specialist for interpretation, which will help everyone learn.
Training and hands-on practice are also crucial. Skills will need to improve over time.
Does It Make Sense for Veterinary Technicians to Perform Ultrasounds?
With veterinary practices being so busy since the pandemic, it makes sense to utilize staff (veterinarians, techs, CSRs, and the rest of the team) to their full potential.
This is one reason why the discussion of a mid-level practitioner (veterinary nurse practitioner) role has become more prominent.
Giving additional roles and responsibilities to educated, trained vet techs could carry a lot of benefits. One would be to take some of the time-consuming duties off the doctors.
This could improve the overall efficiency and profitability of the practice by freeing up more time for the vets and allowing them to see more patients or perform more medical procedures.
Additionally, new roles and skills for vet techs could provide much-needed pay increases, job satisfaction, and career advancement opportunities.
While performing ultrasound studies isn’t a full solution to these industry-wide concerns, it’s one example of a skill set that could contribute to the expanding role of technicians in the profession.
Each vet practice must decide what will work best in their individual practice and adhere to the laws of their state. But there are many reasons to believe that vet techs learning to perform ultrasounds could be beneficial to the whole practice.
Written by: Dr. Tammy Powell, DVM
