In honor of National Radiologic Technologist Week and some other Allied Healthcare week, we’re having a chili cook-off at school on Wednesday. Somehow or another, I got myself roped into making a pot of chili for this event. I haven’t made a good pot of Red in a long time, so I think I’ll knock that out tomorrow and then eat some good chili with my classmates on Wednesday. We’re out of class tomorrow for ‘advising’ day, so it will be a good day to do a little cooking.
I had a great day in clinical today! My worries about getting my required 4 master comps this semester are gone. I’m not sure why I was getting worried, but things started to come together today. My day started out with a string of three portable chest x-rays, so I have completed my three pre-comps for that exam. The next exam I do, pending the quality results, will complete my master comp on that. I also managed to get a pediatric upper extremity by doing a 3-view hand series on a 3-year-old this morning for a pre-comp. I am only required to have one pre-comp on that exam, so the next one of those that pops up should give me a master comp as well. The pediatric stuff doesn’t seem to show up as often though, so I may not see that comp for a while. I also got one of my three required pre-comps on a non-trauma shoulder exam. My last exam of the day turned out to be a master comp though! We had an 8-year-old girl come in for a bone age study. There were no required pre-comps for this exam, so I got my master comp on that. I now have completed two of my required four master comps for the semester, and several more are in sight, so I think I’ll be in excellent shape by the end of the semester. I have also completed 117 of my required 125 procedures for the semester with 5 clinical days remaining, so I’m practically finished with that.
My most interesting experience today was with the 3-view hand exam on the 3-year-old. This child was, in my opinion, a perfect patient considering his age. We brought him into the exam room without his mother. The child had absolutely no problem with that. The child was in for the exam because he had gotten his hand caught in something (I can’t remember what) and there was a chance that a fracture had occurred. My PA and oblique exams with this child went off without a hitch. I used a 45-degree foam block to position his hand for the oblique. Where I ran into problems was with the fan lateral. I showed the child the “OK” sign with my hand and asked him if he could do that. He quickly responded by showing me the OK sign, so I put his hand down on the IR and asked him to do it again. He had a little trouble with it, but I helped him get his fingers in position. As soon as I let go of his fingers, he kept moving them into an improper position for the exam. He was more interested in the laser alignment light and the collimation lamp on the x-ray tube. After several attempts to make this exam work, I had to ask for help. One of the staff RTs had to come into exam room with the child, put on an apron, and stand with the child to hold his hand in position while I made the image. I suppose this is a necessary evil sometimes, but I still felt a little incompetent not being able to sort this out. I probably had no choice, but there must be a trade-off between time and skill here :)
Today was also my first experience with the pigg-o-stat. I had seen one before but never used it. We had an 8-month-old girl who was in for a chest series, so I asked one of the more experience staff RTs to help me out with the pigg-o-stat. Before we brought the patient back, we discussed what was going to happen so I would have a good understanding of what to expect. The first thing she told me about using the pigg-o-stat is that it sometimes upsets the parents more than the children it’s designed to help. She said that the parents sometimes can’t deal with the confinement aspect of the pigg-o-stat and they get a little frantic when the child starts screaming when they are placed in the device. So our goal was to bring the parent and child into the exam room where we would show them the pigg-o-stat and tell them why we use it and demonstrate how it works before proceeding with the exam. This seemed to work out well for this exam. The young girl’s father accompanied her to the exam and he was quite receptive to the idea. We also put an apron on him and let him hold his daughter’s hands up above her head while we did the PA and lateral exposures. The child did scream and cry during her stay in the pigg-o-stat, but she stopped immediately when we took her out and handed her back to her father. I was quite thankful for my RTs great assistance in this procedure. Next time, I’ll probably be able to do it on my own. This was an opportunity for a pre-comp that I need, but I elected to turn it into a learning experience for me instead of trying to slip in a pre-comp that I didn’t feel prepared for yet…
I feel good about today’s experiences and what I have completed. My confidence in clinical is a notch or two higher today :)
I get to register for my spring semester classes online tomorrow. Here’s what I’ll be taking:
RAD-112 - Rad Procedures II (Positioning class) - 4 credit hours
RAD-121 - Rad Imaging I - 3 Credit Hours
RAD-161 - Rad Clinical Ed II - 5 Credit Hours (15 clinical hours)
I’ll have two days per week in clinical next semester instead of one. The learning experiences should better than double for me as I go :)