Sonography culture and protectionism. Response to Letters to Editor by Wolstenhulme and Daulby

摘要

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the Letters to Editor written by S. Wolstenhulme and M. Daulby. We are grateful for their interest in our work and for the debate that our publications have generated. The Letters suggest that the work we have presented would have been enhanced by the inclusion of a wider multi-professional group of healthcare skakeholders. However our aim was to investigate and understand anecdotally-reported negative attitudes towards the introduction of an undergraduate direct entry route; in this instance we were specifically targeting a defined group of participants who had sonography at the core of their role, rather than as an adjunct to their role. It is important to understand the motives and reasoning of those in a particular professional group by examining that group from within. Nevertheless within our 'core sonographer' group the participants were drawn from varied professional roles, including consultant and advanced practitioners, sonographer academics, sonographer managers as well as consultant nurses and midwives. We acknowledge that more detail about participant demographics may have been helpful to the reader, however similar and recurring themes emerged from each interview that appeared to be unrelated to academic attainment or experience post qualification.