Complaints Involving Sonographers: What Three Decades of Cases From A Public New Zealand Database Can Teach Us

Sonographers are health providers who perform highly complex psychomotor, cognitive, interpretive and reporting tasks, all of which carry a risk of error. Such errors may lead to health consumer complaints. The purpose of this review was to analyse all published complaints from the Health and Disability Commissioner (HDC) database.

The HDC case database was searched for all cases including the term 'sonographer'. The cases were extracted, tabulated and analysed.

Fifty-three cases contained the term 'sonographer', but the sonographer was under investigation in only 15 cases. The majority of cases involved sonographers working in the private sector. The HDC raised concerns regarding the sonographer's practice in nine of the fifteen cases (60%). The most common issue was an undetected congenital foetal anomaly. Six cases revolved around the sonographer performing a suboptimal examination that did not adhere to accepted guidelines. The sonographers' response to complaints was characterised by acceptance of responsibility, sadness, regret and apology in all but one case.

Complaints involving sonographers in New Zealand are rare, totalling 15 in the last 31 years and averaging 1.5 per cases per year over the last decade. In clinical settings where radiologists are reporting on the work performed by the sonographer, both the radiologist and the sonographer share collective responsibility for the content of the report.