Pregnant women and cancer patients could face “life-threatening” delays because of a worsening shortage of sonographers, experts warn.
The vacancy rate for sonographers is 24.2% across England, rising to 38.2% in some areas, according to the Society of Radiographers (SoR).
In addition, one in every 13 (7.6%) sonographers are planning to retire within the next year, the census found.
Sonographers carry out ultrasound scans which are essential to pregnancy care and are also used to diagnose cancer.
Pregnant women undergo scans when their baby is 12 weeks old and again at 20 weeks.
Katie Thompson, SoR president and a practising sonographer, said shortages forced hospitals to pull in practitioners from other areas to keep the antenatal services going at the “expense of those other services”.
“Hospitals try their very best to get the three-month and five-month antenatal screening scans done on time,” she said.
“But when there aren’t enough staff, prioritising those scans has a knock-on effect on more urgent later foetal growth scans, which in some cases need to be done within 24 or 36 hours.
“Departments end up struggling to fit in patients who need these emergency scans.”
Ms Thompson said ultrasound also played a role in cancer diagnosis, with a patient’s “first investigation” often being an ultrasound.
Follow up care after treatment “often takes the form of regular ultrasound scans”, she said.
“The government’s recent cancer plan spoke about increasing testing and reducing waiting lists,” she said.
“But sonography is one of the beginning points for people being diagnosed with cancer.
“With the current workforce shortfall, it’s going to be very, very hard to decrease waiting times.
“And if cancers aren’t picked up when they should be, that can have an effect on the patient’s outcome.”
