Johns Hopkins Heart & Vascular Institute offers a 14-month cardiac sonography and echocardiography program. The training consists of eight hours per day, five days per week with both academic and hands-on training. In the classroom, you'll study such topics as echocardiographic principles, physics and instrumentation used to produce the echocardiograms. The student-to-instructor ratio for classroom teaching is 3:1. You'll also have hands-on clinical training one-on-one with an instructor. Admission requirements include at least a two-year associate degree with a 2.5 or higher GPA or a certification in a clinical specialty such as a registered nurse. Academic prerequisites include anatomy and physiology, college level physics and algebra and medical terminology.
Johns Hopkins Heart & Vascular Institute
600 N. Wolfe Street, Blalock 569
Baltimore, Maryland 21287
410-614-3563
hopkinsmedicine.org/heart_vascular_institute/education/echo-training.html
Mayo School of Health Sciences offers an 18-month echocardiography program at their Rochester, Minnesota, and Scottsdale, Arizona, campuses. The lectures are presented live at Rochester and transmitted to students in Scottsdale via interactive video equipment in order to provide face-to-face contact between students and faculty. Both programs include hands-on clinical training in state-of-the-art lab facilities. Classroom courses include cardiovascular anatomy and physiology, adult echocardiography, ultrasound physics and congenital heart disease. In the lab, you'll work with cardiologists, cardiac sonographers and registered nurses to learn such specialties as congenital echocardiography, stress, strain and 3D echocardiography. To gain admission into the program you must have a high school diploma and passed college-level algebra, anatomy, physiology, medical terminology and speech communication.
Mayo School of Health Sciences
Siebens 11
200 First Street SW
Rochester, MN 55905
800-626-9041
mayo.edu/mshs/echo-echo.html
College of InfoMedical Technology offers an echocardiogram program with various class schedules, such as weekdays for 26 weeks or weekends for 32 weeks. You'll receive hands-on training in different heart imaging techniques, including two-dimensional, M-mode, Doppler and color Doppler. You'll also learn to correlate the imaging results with other heart-evaluation methods such as EKG, stress test and phonocardiology. The curriculum includes introduction to echocardiography, principles of cardiac imaging and coronary artery disease courses. You can elect to do an externship where you'll work in a real-world medical office learning front-office procedures for taking appointments, keeping medical records and helping patients with insurance issues.
College of InfoMedical Technology
2701 E. Chapman Ave. Suite 101
Fullerton, CA 92831
714-879-5100
collegeofit.com/medical/ekg.htm