Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
When local healthcare leaders saw a workforce gap, they turned to Owens Community College to train the next generation of cardiac sonography professionals. Using experience gained from the Diagnostic Medical and Vascular Sonography programs, the administration, faculty and staff at Owens built a program to fill the needs expressed by institutions like ProMedica, Mercy Health and others.
The 10 graduates coming out of the first cohort this spring will be ready to sit for national registries after the Cardiac Sonography Program received accreditation with no citations on the first review from the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP) in February.
The CAAHEP accreditation is sought after by employers because it ensures quality education standards and allows graduates to be automatically eligible to sit for their national registries.
“We were asked to start this program by our community partners because of the reputation that our other programs had,” said Julie Posey, chair of the Sonography department at Owens. “All of our community partners were saying we need a cardiac sonography program and we want Owens to do it.”
Receiving zero citations on the first accreditation review was a rare achievement.
“I’ve done a couple accreditation visits and that hasn’t happened before. We’ve always had something; it’s their job to find something. It was an amazing feeling to have zero citations,” Posey said.
Graduates of the Cardiac Sonography Program will step into a profession that is projected to grow by 14 percent through 2030 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with an average salary of $85,226 annually according to the American Society of Echocardiography.
Having long-standing CAAHEP accreditation for diagnostic medical and vascular sonography programs allowed Owens leadership to use them as a model for the cardiac program. The two-year process started before any students were enrolled in the program, leveraging the proven track record and graduate data already available from the other programs. Owens conducted a self-study, student assignments and clinical competency documentation, virtual site visits and a critical review of all program materials.
The accreditation process was a team effort among the Sonography department. Posey mentioned full-time faculty members Mary Sizemore and Kenzie Zesing as instrumental in guiding the accreditation effort.
“Mary is our content expert, and she deserves a great deal of the credit for the cardiac program. I have experience with accreditation and curriculum development, but Mary really drove this,” Posey said. “Kenzie brought experience from our other programs and was instrumental in supporting her.”
Posey said having all three sonography programs receive CAAHEP accreditation speaks to the overall quality of the department.
According to Dr. Denise Smith, Owens provost and vice president of Academic Affairs, cardiac sonography is the 45th unique program at the college to receive accreditation, approval or recognition from 20 different accrediting bodies, “which speaks to the high standards we have established to ensure our students receive an education that is rigorous, relevant and aligned with industry expectations.”
According to Posey, high interest in a cardiac sonography degree in Northwest Ohio is continuing. The second cohort has 10 individuals, and the interest remains strong among incoming students.
To learn more about the cardiac sonography program at Owens, visit owens.edu. You can find more information on CAAHEP at caahep.org.
