Sandra Katanick Honored With Joan Baker Pioneer Award
During 2001 SDMS Conference

from the Fall 2001 issue

SANDRA KATANICK, Executive Director of the ICAVL and the three other Intersocietal Accreditation Commission (IAC) organizations, was recently honored as this year's recipient of the Joan Baker Pioneer Award. The prestigious award was presented during the 2001 Society of Diagnostic Medical Sonography (SDMS) Annual Conference in Las Vegas.

The Joan Baker Pioneer Award, carrying the name of the first President of SDMS, is presented annually to honor individuals who have made innovative contributions that result in unique advancements to the sonography profession.

The Queen Of Quality

While Katanick has published text book chapters and scientific papers in publications such as the Journal of Vascular Technology, the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography and the Journal of Cardiovascular Management, it is her role in accreditation that has most impacted the sonography profession.

Katanick was appointed to the ICAVL Board Of Directors as a representative of SDMS in 1989. At the time, Katanick was employed as a Vascular Applications Specialist for a major ultrasound manufacturer. "I feel that I changed the corporate philosophy regarding the importance of not only selling systems but educating customers on producing the highest quality diagnostic examinations," Katanick said. "The majority of my time was spent teaching customers the correct way to scan and obtain data as well as educating them about support and resources available through SDMS and the Society of Vascular Technology (SVT)."

The ICAVL Board spent two years developing the details of the accreditation process. When the search for an Executive Director began, Katanick applied for and was offered the position. In 1991, she opened the administrative offices of the ICAVL. She joined the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and began to meld non-profit management skills with her clinical expertise.

During a recent conversation between Katanick and Anne M. Jones, BSN, RVT, RDMS, FSVT, a former ICAVL Board member and a past recipient of the Pioneer Award, Jones commented, "Sandy, you are the queen of quality." It is a reputation earned during more than a decade as Executive Director, but Katanick recalls that during the infancy of the ICAVL, not everyone saw the ICAVL's potential impact on the profession as a positive one.

Ambassador For Accreditation

"During the first few years of the ICAVL's existence, my biggest challenge was in marketing the program and getting people to understand the benefits of accreditation," Katanick said. While enjoying considerable support by laboratory staff members throughout the nation, Katanick also faced a strong opposition to accreditation. Some people felt the process was simply too much work. Others distrusted the mandates of an outside organization. Occasionally, members of quality facilities considered accreditation an overzealous intrusion into their daily operations.

Drawing on past experience as the Program Director of an educational program designed to assist technologists and sonographers preparing for certification examinations, Katanick developed an educational workshop called Getting Started: The Road To Successful Accreditation to assist people in completing the application for accreditation. "In addition to teaching people about the nuts and bolts of the application process, the workshops helped to eliminate many of the preconceived notions people had about accreditation and the ICAVL itself." Today, the workshops are still presented, most often by Katanick, and also by technical staff members of the IAC organizations.

Over the years, Katanick developed other workshops designed to bring professionals from across the country and Canada into the accreditation process. These professionals became site visitors who perform on-site evaluations of laboratories whenever necessary and application reviewers who review applications and make recommendations to the Board Of Directors regarding the status of applicants for accreditation. Along with members of the Board Of Directors, site visitors and application reviewers play a crucial role in ensuring the peer-review component of the accreditation process.

Acceptance of the ICAVL by the general medical community was consummated in the mid-1990s as members of the echocardiography, nuclear medicine and nuclear cardiology, and magnetic resonance communities approached the ICAVL to create similar processes within their fields. As a result, the ICAVL was joined by three additional organizations, including the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Echocardiography Laboratories (ICAEL), the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Nuclear Medicine Laboratories (ICANL), and the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Magnetic Resonance Laboratories (ICAMRL). In 1997, the IAC formed as an umbrella organization to oversee management of the four organizations, and Katanick was asked to serve as the Executive Director of all the accreditation programs. Katanick also assisted the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) in creating an accreditation program for general ultrasound. The two organizations forged a joint application process allowing laboratories to apply for general and vascular ultrasound with just one application.

At about the same time, reimbursement policies were drafted requiring vascular accreditation. Since that time, reimbursement policies relating to vascular, echocardiography and nuclear cardiology examinations have been enacted worldwide.

Katanick's role as the ambassador for accreditation twice expanded to serving as an ambassador for the entire vascular profession. Along with approximately six other technologists and sonographers, Katanick participated in an international vascular outreach project organized by Polly DeCann Wilson, RVT. Wilson organized the donation of used ultrasound equipment to several hospitals throughout Poland. Katanick and her colleagues assisted by delivering didactic and hands-on education for vascular testing procedures to physicians in Gdansk and Krakow, Poland.

In addition, she traveled to Australia to assist vascular professionals in the creation of their own accreditation program. John Gocke, MD, RVT, current ICAVL President, has worked with Ms. Katanick since the ICAVL's inception. He said, "Sandy's contributions to vascular laboratories and vascular ultrasound have been extraordinary and far-reaching. Having worked with her since 1989, I believe I can say that Sandy has done more than anyone in this great nation to advance the care of the vascular patient by enhancing the value of the vascular laboratory in helping to render that care."

In Her Own Words

Upon learning of her nomination for the Pioneer Award, she told the nominating committee, "I know we have heard these words on countless Oscar and Emmy Award shows, 'Even if I am not selected, it has truly been an honor to be nominated.' No truer words have been spoken." After reviewing all nominations, the Pioneer Award Committee contacted the IAC's Executive Director to announce that she would be the 2001 recipient. The award gave Katanick the opportunity to reflect upon her twenty-year career in sonography. She said, "Although I am not an educator or even eligible to be an advanced practice sonographer, I think that my major contribution has been making my peers and colleagues more aware of the importance of quality and the need to strive to improve the work that they do on a daily basis. By doing so, they consistently deliver a better product and service to their patient -- a quality, accurate diagnostic evaluation, performed to the best of their ability."

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