All of our classes are led by Dr. Tony DeFrance, an interventional cardiologist with more than 6 years of experience in CTA. Seeing CTA adopted into practice and practiced responsibly is not only our primary focus, it is our passion. We enjoy every class we teach and as evidenced by our testimonials, so do our students.
The advantage of learning in a classroom that is dedicated to CTA training is:
1. Consistency: The continuity of having a systematic reading method presented by Dr. DeFrance and a core group of lecturers.
While many university or hospital oriented classes carry the reputation of a big name, many of these classes are led by an assortment of lecturers. This can result in a scattered sampling of CTA cases. CTA training is not the university's or hospital's primary focus. Their survival does not depend on their courses' quality or their teaching proficiency. A big name does not always mean a good teaching style.
Before you invest your time and money in CTA training, we highly encourage you to research different programs and ask the graduates if they feel they have learned a comprehensive and systematic reading method - or if they were simply presented with a wide variety of cases and left to determine a system on their own. Ask them if they wished they had had more guidance. Ask them if they left completely confident that they had learned a comprehensive reading method. Ask them if they would go back. |
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2. Commitment: Our lecturers are 100% committed to teaching CTA on the day of the class – they are not being pulled aside by clinical responsibilities. Teaching CTA is not a hobby for us, it is our sole focus. To this end, we have 2 or 3 teaching assistants roaming the class to help you learn the workstation. In addition, we have a full time IT tech to ensure you have a smooth workstation experience. Finally, our course coordinator ensures you have a great time at our course by making your course experience comfortable and helping you with restaurant and sightseeing recommendations and reservations.
3. Reputation: We are not owned by a commercial interest (a businessperson or an equipment vendor). 70% of our students come from word-of-mouth recommendations from our graduates. Our core faculty regularly communicates with our students after the course is over, both on a professional and social level. The quality of our work directly determines your opinion of us as a fellow colleague in the cardiology and imaging field. We are not a business that has profit as our primary determinant, selling you accessory products, and finding any lecturer for your training program. This field is just in its infancy and we want to see it succeed. Training is one way to accomplish this. We want your opinion of our program and CTA to be positive for the length of your and our collective careers in the field.
Additionally, Dr. DeFrance is the charmain of the education committee for the SCCT. We believe CTA is the future. Our training programs are not just a side business to compliment our clinical work. It is our sole focus. If we are not excellent, we fail.
4. Unbiased: We are an independent training center. We are vendor neutral. We teach both Vital Images and TeraRecon, but many of our students own GE or Philips workstations. We work with an equal number of students who have scanners from GE, Phillips, Siemens and Toshiba. In our class, you will view cases acquired on Toshiba, Siemens, Phillips and GE scanners. You will watch live cases on a Toshiba 64 and video feeds of a Siemens 64. We are not an outpost that is specific to a major vendor.
It is very rare to have an independent training center, but our reputation has been built on the quality of our program, our high standards and our passion about cardiac imaging.
There are several advantages to our independence. If you have not made a decision on which scanner or workstation to purchase, you can try out different options. As part of the class you will associate with other students with varying experience in an unbiased manner. |
Consistency: 