Continuing education usually refers to any form of post high school education, used to earn additional certification or as a requirement to maintain a professional license. This form of education is entirely meant for individuals who already have degrees.

Continuing education can take the form of online degree or certificate courses, seminars, conferences, workshops or self-guided study. Unlike other types of education, continuing education has no specific format or duration. Some programs may take a day while others span several weeks or months.

Students pursuing continuing studies for personal advancement usually do not receive college credits as the courses are not considered part of the formal training. Attending a conference or seminar that is open to the public, for example, does not give you any education credits.

Continuing education programs enable people who have already earned a college level degree to pursue additional education or advanced training.

Many careers require individuals to enroll for continuing study from time to time so as to keep up with emerging development in the field. This form of learning is referred to as mandatory continuing education.

Because of the highly competitive job market, professionals whose careers do not require continuing education often undertake it as a means to make themselves more marketable to potential employers.

Thanks to the advancement of the Internet technology, it is possible to complete continuing education online from the comfort of your office or home – providing you have a computer and reliable Internet connection.

Online continuing education programs are ideal for individuals who need an extremely flexible learning schedule. The main advantage of these online programs is the fact that student’s can access them during their free time – meaning professionals don’t have to give up their full time jobs to pursue higher education.

These programs usually provide the student with all the materials needed to complete a certain course: books, lecture notes etc. The students are supposed to complete the coursework at their own leisure, including sitting for the final exam.

While most online programs are entirely based online, some programs provide a low-residency format where most of the work is completed online, but the students are expected to go to the college for a week or two every semester to get practical experience and network with their faculties and peers.

To complete an online program, you need to have the necessary motivation to study during your free time.

An ultrasound tech performs the role of scanning the bodies of patients with sound waves. The professional creates images that the physician can use to detect medical conditions, monitor medical conditions and/or assess the health of fetal in pregnant women. Therefore, they work directly with physicians and patients. Ultrasound technicians are also referred to as diagnostic medical sonographers or simply sonographers. They often specialize in abdominal sonography, obstetric & gynecologic, cardiac, vascular, breast or neurosonography. Many of these professionals are employed in medical centers, hospitals or private clinics.

Educational requirements

To work in this field, you require an associate degree in sonography. The associate degree programs take about 2 years. Furthermore, to practice as a sonographer, you can enroll for a bachelor degree program that takes 4 years. Professionals who are already working in the health care industry can consider a certificate program that takes 1 year. This gives the practitioner the opportunity to learn diagnostic medical sonography. Some employers provide on-the-job training to their workers who possess experience in other healthcare careers, such as nursing.

In any training program, several courses are taught including anatomy, patient care, basic physics, instrumentation, physiology and medical ethics. In addition, learners obtain supervised clinical training. Many of the employers opt to hire candidates who have acquired their training from an accredited program. The accrediting body seeks to determine the technician’s expertise in visualizing particular sections of the body. Ultrasound technicians who possess a wide range of credentials and specializations often have the best employment prospects and chances of promotion. Multiple specialties can advance your opportunities to supervisory, administrative or managerial positions.

Ultrasound technician information details the educational and skill requirements. To obtain certification, the technician needs to pass 2 exams. The general examination includes sonography principles, equipment and physics, while the specialty examination is concerned with diseased or normal anatomy of the body organs.

Skills required for the job

To work effectively as a sonographer, you need to have certain characteristics. Considering you are expected to work on a one-on-one basis with patients, you need to have good interpersonal skills. In addition, you need to have good hand-eye coordination. You also need to be detail oriented. It is equally important to have good physical stamina because you will be expected to spend a greater part of your day standing. Good physical stamina will help you lift and move the patients.

On a typical day, you will be expected to keep patient records, prepare work schedules, maintain equipment, evaluate equipment purchases and manage the diagnostic imaging department or a sonography.

Most of the nursing homes and government hospitals worldwide organize different kinds of workshops and skill set trainings for their staff. It is a matter of great importance for the healthcare industry. Through these, the staff is trained to know the healthcare aspects better and excel in their work.

Apart from intensive continuing education and certification courses for caregivers, the healthcare sector also organizes different wellness programs for external communities.

Hospitals and nursing homes can use the online class management solution to streamline their internal or external training events and activities with efficient registrations, attendee management, and certifications. The online class management solution is going to transform the way your organization creates, publishes, promotes, sells, and manages training-related programs.

You can considerably reduce your administrative workload and save your precious time by using the Cloud-based, scalable online registration facility. It helps in easily enrolling students in classes and trainings within a short time. Apart from creating the registration pages online, you can also customize them as per your requirements.

To ease your tension in handling diverse class/training payments, the online class management solution has brought in a reliable, multiple payment option. People can pay their class/training registration fees and donate funds through credit cards, purchase orders, checks, or by using their own merchant accounts.
The class management services allow the event organizers to build secure private communities for their members. The private community management platform enables effective engagement with your former patient communities for the purpose of fundraising, developing online platforms of patients, supporting groups, and managing volunteer programs.

The private community solution platform can be used to share and update your members about the ongoing or upcoming classes and trainings and to get post-event feedbacks from the members. The private communities come with dominant features, such as hierarchical calendaring, among others, to simplify the task of nurturing multiple, discreet communities.

Private community management solution also includes a host of social and enterprise networking elements, such as mailing and notification tools, promo codes, and discount rules. It also offers a seamless connectivity to social networks, such as Facebook, and mobile devices, such as smartphones.
In a sense, the web-based class/training solution is ideal for:

• Training Registrations
• Continuing Education and Certifications
• Wellness Workshops
• Community Engagement
• Third-party Audits and Process Evaluation
• Volunteer and Outreach program management

Thus, in a nutshell, the online class/training management solution helps the healthcare organizations increase their class and program registrations, reduce payment problems, schedule class details, and evaluate the progress of programs offered to members.