By Molly Magennis
Faye Temple, who hails from Seaholme, has been awarded an Order of the Member of Australia for her dedicated service to sonography.
Ms Temple has had an extensive career as a sonographer, which is someone who performs ultrasounds. She was the sonographer in charge at St Vincent’s Hospital from 2002- 2019 and was the president of the Australasian Sonographers Associations from 2010- 2013.
In 2012, she was awarded Professional of the Year by Professions Australia.
She currently lectures at RMIT and Monash University, spreading her knowledge and wisdom with upcoming sonographers.
During her career, one of the things Ms Temple was and still is extremely passionate about is maintaining a high standard of ultrasounds.
“Ultrasounds are something that’s really easy to do badly and it’s quite hard to do well, and the patient who comes in to have an ultrasound doesn’t know whether it’s been done badly or well,” she said.
“So I’m very enthusiastic about maintaining the standards of ultrasounds that are done, it makes a very big difference to people.”
“Unlike other procedures in the medical system, ultrasounds depend on the person doing the ultrasound to see the pathology and document it properly and look at appropriate things, whereas others produce a picture and the doctor interprets it.
“So it’s very important for us to do it very well.”
The retired sonographer said the amount of times an ultrasound is performed incorrectly “happens way too often for my liking.”
Despite this, Ms Temple said she is grateful for her long and rewarding career.
“I just consider myself very fortunate to have had a very challenging and satisfying career while I was working. It was great.”
