On Thursday, October 17, Camosun College announced that it is launching Vancouver Island’s first Digital Medical Sonography program next year. Diagnostic medical sonographers are health care professionals who use sonography technology to take internal images of a patient.
“The college is really excited about this,” says Camosun dean of Health and Human Services Cynthia Smith. “Like any new program, it’s been a partnership right across education approvals, the registrar’s office, and the program chair. We’ve hired new faculty, who are sonographers, to be teaching in the program. It’s really involved all kinds of people across the college, including that it was a key part of the new construction in the teaching clinic in The [Alex & Jo Campbell] Centre for Health and Wellness.”
Smith says that the new two-year program has been a large investment—the provincial government put in $1.4 million to support the development, launch, and delivery of the program and $4 million in capital funding for equipment and the creation of classroom and lab space in the building—and that sonography is a growing profession that is in high demand.
“We’ve had to purchase expensive but specific sonography equipment,” she says, “equipment that not only provides service but also to simulate what students would see if they were scanning someone, so maybe simulating a cardiac concern or a pregnancy.”
Smith says that the college has been thinking of starting this program for many years.
“I remember walking across the Lansdowne campus and hearing about the need for this, and that was when I first started, almost six years ago,” says Smith. “In fact, it’s been a vision at the college for about six or seven years, envisioned first when we started the Medical Radiography program.”
The Camosun program is the first time sonography will be taught on Vancouver Island.
“There are two other programs [in BC],” says Smith. “One is at BCIT, and the other is The College of New Caledonia in Prince George, which just started this fall. So we are the first on Vancouver Island, and the third in BC.”
Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Fillette Umulisa says that the CCSS is also very happy about the new program and the partnerships that have formed while creating it.
“We are so thankful to the ministry for funding this program at Camosun,” Umulisa says. “It is very good that students on the island do not have to go all the way to BCIT. It is only 16 seats right now, but I think it is a great change overall.” (The college will be taking 16 students into the program in May 2020; the second intake, in 2021, will be 32 students.)
There have also been many other people and organizations wanting to get on board with Camosun’s new sonography program, Smith says.
“So many people have worked together,” she says, “We have received significant funding from the Ministry [of Advanced Education, Skills and Training] to be able to offer it. It’s also a very exciting partnership with Island Health.”
Smith says that the applications for the programs have been arriving fast, and that opening up a project like this one takes effort from everyone involved.
“It is so much work from all parts of the college,” she says. “It’s been a Camosun partnership, as well as a partnership with the government, both the Ministry of Advanced Education and Island Health.”
Umulisa says that she recognizes that the new program might be expensive for students, and she hopes that the college keeps tuition reasonable (the Camosun website currently lists the estimated program tuition at $36,461 for a diploma and $898 to $1,572 for a one-term advance certificate; the program is not open to international students).
“As a program, medical sonography is a little expensive,” says Umulisa. “We actually hope that Camosun will set the tuition at a rate that is affordable for residents of Vancouver Island. We want students to take advantage of this opportunity.”