There are no guidelines barring medical programs from asking students to practice transvaginal ultrasounds on one another, it has emerged, after two unnamed students sued a Florida community college for allegedly forcing them to practice the invasive procedure on one another.
The Joint Review Committee on Diagnostic Medical Sonography guidelines only stipulate that participation should be voluntary, and should not be tied to grades.
The two plaintiffs, both known as Jane Doe in the lawsuit filed in federal district court in Florida, allege teachers at Valencia State College in Orlando violated their constitutional rights to free speech and against warrantless searches when faculty threatened to dock their grades if the women didn’t allow classmates to perform the invasive procedure on them.
The women were allegedly forced to undress, come into the classroom in towels, and undergo transvaginal ultrasounds conducted by their classmates on an almost weekly basis, according to the lawsuit. The women sometimes had to be sexually “stimulated” to ease the procedure, the suit says. The lawsuit states that all this was done despite the fact the school has anatomically correct dolls on which to practice transvaginal ultrasounds.
Faculty allegedly “browbeat” female students into undergoing the procedures, even after they complained, the lawsuit alleges, and threatened to “blacklist” students who refused to participate.
During an orientation, a student nicknamed the “TransVag Queen” told the two plaintiffs that faculty believed women “should undergo multiple invasive transvaginal procedures in order to become better sonography technicians”, according to the lawsuit.
The suit also says that when the students complained to the program’s chair, Barbara Ball, but were told they could “find another school if they did not wish to be probed”.
At least one male student regularly probed female students, the suit alleges.
It also claims Ball made inappropriate comments during the procedures. According to the lawsuit, Ball told a student undergoing the procedure that she was “sexy” and that she should be an “escort girl”.
Ball has been with the school since 1998, according to a faculty biography on Valencia’s website. She was previously a radiology technologist at Arnold Palmer hospital.
In a statement, Valencia college claimed it was standard for students in medical education programs to practice procedures on one another, even those as invasive as transvaginal ultrasounds.
“The use of volunteers – including fellow students – for medical sonography training is a nationally accepted practice,” said Valencia’s director of public relations, Carol Traynor.
“Valencia’s sonography program has upheld the highest standards with respect to ultrasound scanning for educational purposes, including voluntary participation and professional supervision by faculty in a controlled laboratory setting. Nonetheless, we continue to review this practice and others to ensure that they are effective and appropriate for the learning environment.”
Attorneys for the students wrote that Valencia stopped the practice after their inquiries. Traynor said the school could not comment directly on the lawsuit, because it had not yet been served.
But attorneys for the students say that they had been unable to find another sonography program where students practiced this skill on one another.
The organization that accredits entry level health education programs around the country – including at Valencia – said there was no data to indicate how widespread the practice might be.
The same organization said Valencia’s diagnostic medical sonography program had operated without complaints since 1992.
“Well, what I learned in the past 24 hours is that there’s no good data on that, that nobody really knows,” said Kathleen Megivern, executive director of the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (Caahep), when the Guardian asked how widespread the practice may be.
Megivern said there were no guidelines against asking students to practice transvaginal ultrasounds on one another, only against tying participation to grades.
“I mean, every health profession, to some degree or another, uses students kind of practicing on each other, whether it’s learning how to do injections, whether it’s learning how to measure body fat,” Megivern said. “That kind of general piece is common practice across the disciplines and in medical school, too, for that matter. But, obviously, this would be a different kind of situation.”
The standard for students practicing transvaginal ultrasounds on one another, according to the Joint Review Committee on Diagnostic Medical Sonography, which sets standards that Caahep uses, is that participation should be voluntary, but is not barred.
Programs “must ensure voluntary and prudent use of students or other human subjects for non-clinical scanning”, the standard says. Tying participation to students’ grades is barred.
A transvaginal ultrasound is a diagnostic test that uses a wave-producing probe to create a picture of women’s reproductive organs on a nearby monitor. The probe is typically covered in a condom and gel and inserted into a woman’s vagina. The test looks at the uterus, cervix and ovaries, according to the National Institutes of Health, and is “usually painless”.
Women must be naked from the waist down to undergo the procedure.
