17 Mar 2023
Angie Lloyd-Jones is one of the driving forces behind the Small Animal Veterinary Guidelines for Professional Ultrasound Practice, published by The British Medical Ultrasound Society.
Paul Imrie
Job Title
Angie Lloyd-Jones, an imager at Northwest Veterinary Specialists, is a driving force behind an influential guideline for ultrasound practice.
Three years of hard work by an imager at a leading UK veterinary hospital has culminated in benchmark guidelines for ultrasound practice being published.
Angie Lloyd-Jones, who works for Northwest Veterinary Specialists in Runcorn, has been a driving force of the Small Animal Veterinary Guidelines for Professional Ultrasound Practice, which has now been published by The British Medical Ultrasound Society.
The paper, which focuses on abdominal ultrasound, is the first of its kind to act as a benchmark for best practice principles and help operators and patients stay safe. It has been endorsed by the European College of Veterinary Diagnostic Imaging.
Unlike in human medicine, veterinary ultrasound has no professional patient standards and no competency-based course, so Mrs Lloyd-Jones and Julie Burnage, both partners at Aspire UCS, set about changing things.
Mrs Lloyd-Jones said: “I decided to start writing this document having transitioned from human into veterinary ultrasound. I was astounded that when I started, there was nothing to help me.
“Guidelines are essential, as ultrasound is so operator dependent. These operators need standards to keep both them and their patients safe.
“Just as importantly, I am especially passionate about empowering veterinary nurses to diversify their skillset into ultrasound, and this document has been designed primarily to help them and other non-vet ultrasound operators to do so, within their well-defined scope of practice.”
Mrs Lloyd-Jones thanked European Board of Veterinary Specialists’ Andrew Parry, head of diagnostic imaging at fellow Linnaeus hospital Willows Veterinary Centre and Referral Service, for the support he had given her.
She now said she was working on three more sections: cardiac, emergency and critical care, and ultrasound-guided locoregional anaesthesia.
She said: “Our aim is these guidelines will help to keep our nurses, medical sonographers and, indeed, primary care vets safer when undertaking their ultrasound scans.”
The guidance can be viewed online.
