What are the observable behaviours, knowledge, skills and attitudes that should be demonstrated by sonographers?

The accrediting body for sonographers in Australia has outlined the minimum standards of practice for sonographers (1). These published competency standards provide the best available resource to guide academic and clinical teachers and supervisors of sonographers and sonography students. However these standards provide only broad descriptions of observable behaviours, knowledge, skills and attitudes of sonographers and lack clearly translatable descriptors that these factors can be assessed against. We also believe there is wide variance in the sonographic community of the understanding of these behaviours, knowledge, skills and attitudes, and how they should be demonstrated at different stages of learning. This research will identify, via a consensus process, a set of standards for sonographer practice with detailed descriptors for behaviours, skills, knowledge and attitudes at different levels of learning. This research will identify, via a consensus process, a set of standards for sonographer practice with detailed descriptors for behaviours, skills, knowledge and attitudes at different levels of learning. This will provide a more detailed framework that will be useful to enable development of a) assessment tools for pre and post accreditation education, b) a self-assessment tool for student and accredited sonographers, c) a performance management tool for sonographer managers, d) a tool to structure sonographer pre and post accreditation curriculum, and e) a tool to guide return to practice assessments.