Technique Charts
One of our areas of study during the first week of the summer semester is technique charts. One of my objectives this semester is to start building a reliable technique chart. In order to do this, I want to measure the thickness of some body parts that I’m imaging and record the exposure technique that goes along it whenever I come across exposures that I think are really good. This will start to give me a baseline to use whenever I’m not using automatic exposure controls. My first hurdles to this project were that no one knows for sure what the screen speeds or bucky grid ratios are at my clinical site. I discussed this with my instructor and he recommended making an assumption that we’re using 200 speed screens an 10:1 grids, which would fall in line with what’s in use at the other facilities I have be in so far. Today when I returned to clinical, I started looking for the calipers so I could measure some patients, and there are none to be found. Without those, I can’t begin to start making any real sense of techniques. I sent an email to my instructor to ask if I could borrow a set of our calipers from the lab for a couple weeks. Hopefully he’ll allow me to do that since we don’t use them in the lab. The thickness of our phantoms never change :)
I didn’t run into much of anything intriguing at clinical today. I did learn that refuse from a barium enema can smell particularly foul, especially when the patient’s large intestine was not cleaned out to an optimum level before the study was started. I had to clean up a floor in a dressing room where a patient had ’spilled’ some barium, and it about knocked me out.
I got my first precomp on a barium enema today. I’m looking forward to getting some fluoroscopy comped this semester…
congrats on the precomp. So is there anything you can do to get around that kind of odor incident? Gum or anything? doesn’t sound fun at all.
@gaile: I don’t think so. When we did the scout x-ray, we knew that the patient wasn’t cleaned out properly, so we were prepared for the potential mess, but it was just my first experience with the odor…
When I worked at hospital depts I always had a nurse to take careof the oderous cleaning up.
Not so in private practices.I had to clense and bear the odours by myself But we always in both depts used a 3 or 4 day pre Xr preparation such as Evac- which cleansed most patients for routine B enemae Those who after plain ray showing faeces + or possible obstruction had either an enema using Iodine double air contrast or now more frequently CT with or without iodised contrast such as diluted gastrographin.
Technique charts were always part of the scene
mauual orauto expNot just using measurements but also using high KV Mas etc shortestexp for use on difficult patients There was a deptal chart for each machine BUT we also madeupour own personal tech for our own personal use especialy for children obese or difficult patients
jhnirl