Many years ago, the ABRET EEG exam included an oral exam
which included several sections, including record review, EEG pattern
recognition and a demonstration of skill at measuring a head and placing leads
accurately. When I took the exam in
1980, volunteer subjects served as the candidates’ patients, and we actually
ran a real EEG recording as part of the exam.
Eventually, the live subject process was no longer practical and ABRET
substituted a “Sam” mannequin head, and candidate had to measure and apply
leads to Sam instead.
In more recent years, the oral section of the ABRET exam
ended for many valid reasons, and a two-part, written only exam replaced the
oral exam. For the past year, the EEG
registry exam has been offered in one-part.
Once the exam no longer included a practical demonstration
of head measurement and lead placement skills, an apparent misconception
surfaced, that this was not an important part of the EEG recording
process. However, both ABRET and ASET
have always stressed that measuring the patient’s head prior to lead placement
is an essential part of the patient set-up.
Occasionally, an attendee at the ASET EEG
Boot Camp inquires about a 10/20 head measurement/lead placement workshop as
part of the seminar. We used to include
such a workshop but it was very difficult to maintain and ship enough Sam heads
to make this workshop “work”. We also
found that many seminar attendees were not interested in participating. So, in recent years, we replaced that time in
the seminar with additional lectures and instrumentation workshops. But, once again, I would like to emphasize
that we at ASET promote head measurement as a very important part of the lead
placement process, and accurate electrode placement is vital!
There is a full on-line curriculum of EEG coursework created
by ASET and available as individual courses on the ASET website. One of the courses is EEG 202: Electrodes,
Electrode Placement and Application. I
am pleased to announce that we have just upgraded the content of this course!
Maureen Carroll, the ASET On-line Course Developer, worked
on creating a professional video tutorial on the skills of head measurement and
lead placement. She spent many hours
scripting the video, and working with a media studio to film the demonstration. This video is 40 minutes in duration and
offers a step by step overview of the process, and has been uploaded as a
lesson in the on-line course.
I can highly recommend this course for entry level
technologists and trainees! You will
benefit from the coaching and detail included.
Enrollees can revisit the video as often as they wish while learning
this skill. The course offers 20 ASET
CEUs, meaning that there is at least 20 contact hours of course material, and
the registration fee is $199 for ASET members and $299 for non-members. To view
the course in our on-line store, please use this link: ASETon-line EEG courses
