Women's Health Advisors features Ob/Gyn physicians and medical professionals that have volunteered their time in support of the women's Health Forum. The doctors and other professionals spend countless hours each week answering health questions posted to the forum. We thought you might want to learn a little more about these folks.

Terry J. DuBose, M.S., RDMS

OBGYN.net: Please share with us the story of how and why you decided to enter the field of Ob/Gyn. 

Terry: My undergraduate degree was in Business Administration ('66). There is a longer version of this, but suffice it to say, I ended up volunteering to go to Vietnam (worst mistake of my life). It took me a few years to get my head screwed back down correctly. After a few years of "self-directed graduate" studies at the Univ. of Texas, and protesting with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), I decided that I wanted to do something constructive and helpful. I made a decision of conscience to go into health care, and went to a career councilor at the Texas Hospital Association. He suggested radiologic technology because I had experience with photography, video, and silk-screening (protest signs & T-shirts). So I entered the Seton Hospital X-ray school. One thing lead to another and I ended up with one of the first sonographic machines in Austin in 1976. I immediately fell in love with the modality and obstetrical sonography particularly. I was fortunate to work with a group of physicians who had an academic bent and they encouraged experimentation and publication. They did not have to support this sort of thing, we were not an academic institution. Some of them were really interested in knowledge for knowledge sake. We ended up publishing the first documented images of the uterine myometrial arcuate arteries, the female urethra, the fetal cranial volume, and a regression on the embryonic heart rate with age. That lead to W. B. Saunders Co. asking me to edit FETAL SONOGRAPHY, which was a large part of why I am at the Univ. Arkansas for Medical Sciences now.

OBGYN.net: How long have you been in practice and what is the community you serve like?

Terry: As I said above, I had one of the first two sonographic machines in Austin in 1976. I am now the Director of the Diagnostic Medical Sonography Program at the Univ. Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock. Most of my time is now spent lecturing and dealing with paperwork, but I have arranged to scan for a half day a week in the UAMS high-risk OB clinic.

OBGYN.net: What are your particular areas of expertise and interest? 

Terry: I have done most kinds of medical imaging, spent time in the early 70's as chief of angiography, routine x-ray, nuclear medicine, but mainly sonography since 1976. I have also done computer programming and wrote one of the first computer programs for the analysis of multiple fetal parameters. That program is BASIC BABY, (written in basic programming language). But my real love is fetal sonography.

OBGYN.net: What is the most rewarding part of being a doctor for you? 

Terry: I'm not a doctor. But as a part of the health care team, I like to believe that we are helping people, reducing pain, and generally contributing to society.

OBGYN.net: Why did you choose to get involved in the Women's Health Forum?  

Terry: Because I am interested in maternal/fetal medicine. It just sort of evolved out of the ob-gyn.list. Most sonographers are technophiles, we really like high-tech toys. And computers and computer graphics are just the neatest things.

OBGYN.net: How do you foresee the Internet and OBGYN.net can better serve Women's Health Care? 

Terry: By getting information to people quickly and easily; and facilitating professional communications. Of course, we probably can't even imagine what will ultimately come of all this. At the AIUM conference in San Diego last month I saw a demonstration of a person scanning in San Diego under the verbal direction of a person in Seattle Washington. The person in Seattle had control of the machine in San Diego and could adjust the image controls. It was all done somehow over the WWWeb. So who knows what the future holds.

OBGYN.net: Is there anthing else you'd like to add?  

Terry: Keep up the good work.

Terry J. DuBose, M.S., RDMS; Assistant Professor
Program Director, Diagnostic Medical Sonography
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences,
Fellow, AIUM
tjdubose@chrp.uams.edu
http://www.uams.edu/chrp/dmshome.htm
http://www.io.com/~dubose/
http://www.obgyn.net/CORRESP/DUBOSE.HTM

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