Partnering with Highly-Trained Clinicians Starts with the Provider’s Commitment to Resources and Education

Offering excellent IONM services starts with the hiring and training process. There are only a very few university-based IONM specific education programs that exist, so understanding how your potential IONM partner educates and trains their staff along with the didactic and clinical curriculum they use is vital to your selection process.

How We Support IONM Clinicians and Hospitals

At SpecialtyCare we offer a pathway to IONM certification through our formally recognized training program that our experts built from the ground up. SpecialtyCare’s IONM training program is a year-long and divided into three phases:

Phase One

The first phase begins at our headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. Our IONM leaders lay out the bulk of the curriculum face-to-face with students during this time. Classroom lectures, training with simulation OR, and technical training with electrodes are all introduced during this stage. Students learn how to properly communicate with surgeons and the anesthesia staff in a fast-paced and pressure-cooking operating room. They also get to shadow clinicians in a real OR setting.

Phase Two and Three

During the second phase, students are in the hospital working with the permanent teams they’ve been assigned to. These teams may serve multiple hospitals at once, and this allows more advanced clinical training to be incorporated in a real-life environment. While the second phase usually lasts about four months, phase three is even longer. Students begin to prep for the national board exam with ABRET, the official organization for neurodiagnostic testing and accreditation. It’s a multiple-choice, 250 question test, and every one must pass to graduate our IONM program.

Program Eligibility

Before joining our program, students must have a Bachelor’s degree, preferably in neuroscience or healthcare. Students may not enter an operating room for a mentored clinical internship without continuous, successful evaluations conducted by our education program director, supervisors, and senior staff members. Our students are then evaluated based on performance criteria in the OR itself before being granted clinical privileges through our credentialing process. For our clinicians that are doctoral-level neurophysiologists, we encourage specialty board certification as Diplomates of the America Board of Neurophysiologic Monitoring. 

The Malcolm Knowles Award

SpecialtyCare had the honor of recently receiving a distinguished award in the IONM field. The Malcolm Knowles Award is given to teams or individuals for outstanding leadership to programs that demonstrate particular effectiveness, relevancy, creativity, and legislative impact. In October of 2019, the award was given to SpecialtyCare’s intraoperative neuromonitoring training program by the AAACE. Thanks to Julie Trott, Director of IONM Education, and her amazing team, SpecialtyCare got to ring in the new year with yet another IONM milestone.

Intraoperative neuromonitoring is a unique industry that combines neuroscience with patient care, and the field grows more and more every year. Not only is SpecialtyCare determined to keep up with the demand for IONM clinicians, we’re also dedicated to providing the most dedicated and well-trained staff imaginable. We make sure our clinicians are fully ready for the OR to ultimately provide safer surgery for our patients. 

To find out more about our intraoperative neuromonitoring services in your area, get in touch with our team today. We would love to speak with you!