It cannot be stressed enough that the real shining star of ultrasound is the real-time assessment of a structure; the actual sweeping back and forth through the organ of interest. It can be all too easy for new scanners to focus on finding the organ and taking a picture of it. Don’t forget to sweep through that structure! Here’s a good example: When scanning a kidney in the sagittal plane, plant your probe and angle it side to side. As you sweep through the kidney, assess medial to lateral until you have scanned completely in and out of the kidney. You never know, you might pick up an exophytic cyst on the periphery of the kidney!
Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t getting textbook images at the beginning of your ultrasound journey, it’s the assessment that counts.
