Empowering women in waiting with at-home ultrasound
Things weren’t going according to plan. My fetus’s tiny hands were gripping his penis in a way that obscured the ultrasound. The technician was unable to get all the required sonogram images. We had no choice but to wait until the baby decided to let go — we were at his mercy.
An hour or so later, I waddled out of the exam room and into the waiting room to find a group of stoic expectant moms. The administration staff broke the silence.
“We hear that your son wasn’t cooperating!”
We all shared a knowing laugh at the embryo’s antics despite the less than funny hour that’d been stacked onto everyone’s wait time.
Long wait times for in-office sonograms are not unusual. I remember sitting there in those wait rooms for hours taking requisite pregnant lady bathroom breaks. When you’re going in for a routine screening like I was, you just suck it up but in emergency situations when there are signs of complications such as vaginal bleeding or pain, women can’t afford to wait.
When pregnant women are faced with life-threatening situations such as ectopic pregnancies, quick access to screening can advert the worst outcomes.
Unfortunately, for global women, quick screenings are not always the case. Researchers found that ultrasound wait times for pregnant women with symptoms in Kingston, Jamaica, were on average three hours and up to 16.
Equal access to good prenatal care which includes an ultrasound, is a health disparity. Here in the U.S., patients living in rural counties were found to have less than half the access to ultrasounds than people living in cities, and women of color have at least twice the rate of pregnancy-related deaths compared to their white counterparts.
Portable ultrasound devices can be a game changer for global women, and especially for those of us in under-served and hard to reach communities. Such was the case for the pregnant refugees who used portable sonogram technology while fleeing Ukraine. Sonogram scans were sent to medical professionals in Israel for review and follow-up virtual care.
Portable ultra-sound can be performed in the comfort of one’s own home, allowing women to perform ultrasounds before even stepping foot in a doctor’s office or clinic. This could possibly help to eliminate bias in diagnoses by presenting medical professionals with sonogram data first, versus a human communicating symptoms, eliminating steps towards diagnoses and communication barriers. Especially handy when health professionals lack proper health communication and inter-cultural communication training.
This is key as increasing numbers of Black women are speaking out about having traumatic experiences in physical healthcare settings. In this heartbreaking essay I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman Tressie McMillian Cottom, assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, recounts her experience with subpar medical care that resulted in the loss of her child. She writes:
“I went to the hospital. They asked again about my back, implied I had eaten something “bad” for me and begrudgingly, finally decided to do an ultrasound.”
A recent study analyzed over 1.8 million medical records and found that bias against Black women in healthcare is systemic. The findings showed that doctors needed to “work through” diagnoses for Black women. Patients of other ethnicities and genders were questioned less and required less “cognitive effort” on the part of doctors and caregivers.
Global women should not have to wait or beg for timely ultrasounds, which drastically improve positive pregnancy outcomes. Let’s get this technology in the hands of expectant mothers worldwide. You can help by donating to organizations doing the work such as Imaging the World. This organization currently trains nurses and midwives in Africa to perform ultrasounds and interpret sonograms sent over secure cellular networks.
Imani Razat is a writer and communications consultant. She has a Master’s in Communication from John’s Hopkins University.
