Mammography Education and Training

Advanced Health Education Center, LTD (AHEC) has been training certified radiologic technologists to become mammographers and providing continuing education to improve mammography skills since 1989. The education division has been involved in all aspects of the development of curriculum as it has progressed according to federal and state laws. Members of the faculty were involved in the original meetings as the Mammography Quality Standards were developed after the passage of the Mammography Quality Standards Act (MQSA). Our faculty are considered to be pioneers in the upgrading of skills for clinical mammographers. As accreditation of facilities became mandatory, our faculty taught classes assisting facilities to upgrade and meet the new requirements. The faculty has also been active in assisting facilities gaining new skills for the digital age and equipment and opening new facilities where mammography services were not available for the geographic area.

Mammography training and consulting services are designed to help gain and retain the necessary information to deliver the best patient care. If you are choosing to enter the field of mammography and are a registered, certified or licensed radiologic technologist with one year of experience you may apply for the initial training required by federal and state law. It is important for you to know that you must obtain this classroom training with the required 25 clinical procedures under supervision BEFORE you may perform procedures on patients. You are required to obtain 40 hours of mammography education including the time for the 25 clinical procedures under supervision. There is mandatory subject content required in the training that is specified in both federal and state regulations. Some states require more subject content than is specified in the federal regulations. AHEC's coursework in the initial training course is more than 40 hours. You must also obtain 8 hours of modality specific training. That means that if your facility does analog (film/screen) mammography, you must have 8 hours of training for analog. If your facility does digital mammography, you must have 8 hours of training that is specific to digital mammography. If you hope to advance to the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists advanced level certification exam, you will see questions on both types of mammography on the exam.

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Mammography Consulting

Advanced Health Education Center's consulting services for Mammography CE just a phone call away. We can assist you in planning, problem solving, and improving your clinical services. Our commitment is to improve your mammography practice with "hands-on" for phantom analysis, viewbox image review, positioning skills evaluation and improvement, and equipment applications. We can perform on-site evaluations with follow-up by telephone. We can accommodate mammographers for regulatory positioning corrections with our clinical partners and our faculty. We have an 8 hours online positioning educational activity that is available through our website for preliminary refresh before our instructor arrives on-site for observation of patient procedures. We provide an action plan and our faculty credentials meet all the requirements to provide remedial instruction.

We provide the following services:

• Mammography program startup
• Digital and film/screen modalities
• ACR/State accreditation process
• Inspection preparedness
• Corrective Action Plans
• Policy and Procedures
• Operations and Productivity
• Workflow Process
• Image Quality Analysis
• Hands-on Positioning Instruction
• Expert Image Critique
• Augmented Positioning
• Quality Control Startup
• Quality Control Analysis/Training