Road to Radiography

Today was the first day in the new clinical site, and I hit the ground running with an 8am double contrast barium enema. There’s an old saying that I like to remember occasionally that says: “Eat a bullfrog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.” I guess the same holds true for getting the barium enema out of the way early…

I’m really going to like this clinical site. I worked with two techs today who were excellent, and they both seemed to be interested in helping me with my goals. That’s always a good feeling. I expect that I’ll be able to get a lot of work done here during the next 10 weeks.

I actually got my first opportunity to comp a T-Spine today. I made two perfect images to get the new semester’s comps rolling. The only thing I didn’t care for on this exam was that this site prefers T-spines to be done on the table rather than standing. When we learned the spinal routines in class and lab, we were taught that these exams could be done either way, but in my past experiences, even though they are limited, I believe that its easier to do T-spines erect, especially for the lateral. My T-spine patient today was in for a follow-up for a T12 compression fracture. I’m also curious as to why the doctor would not want a coned-down view of the T-11 / L1 area. I did several T-12/L1 junction images when I was in the ortho office last semester.

I’m planning to start getting my pre-comps and comps on the fluoro studies this week. They do a good bit of fluoro here, and I have a lot of that stuff left to get comped.

I’m back to lecture and lab tomorrow, so I’m signing off… I have a lot of reading to do :)

As the photo may indicate, I’m going to be tied up for the rest of the summer it seems. The way our summer semester works is just a bit outside of the norm. Instead of the regular 16 weeks, we have a 10-week semester. During this 10 weeks, I have two classes plus clinicals. Our RAD-122 (Radiographic Imaging II) is held during the first five weeks and the RAD-131 (Physics) is held during the second five weeks. In a nutshell, we’re covering 16 weeks worth of material in a five-week period twice during the summer term.

We jumped right into the imaging class today. We had nearly 6 hours of lecture covering technique chart development, automatic exposure control, and radiographic film. We didn’t quite finish the section on radiographic film, but we’ll be finishing that up in class on Wednesday and having our first test next Wednesday. Oddly enough, we’re out of class on Monday for Memorial Day.

I start my summer clinical session in an outpatient center tomorrow morning at 8am. Tomorrow is going to be another one of those really long days for me. My clinical runs from 8 until 3:30 and then I have to go to work around 4. I have one sports photography assignment at 4pm and another one at 7pm, so it will be around 10pm at the earliest until I find my way back home. Days like that make it very difficult to get any useful studying done. Luckily, I have a long weekend to make up for it before my first test.

As of this time, I haven’t organized my documentation for this clinical session yet, but I intend to do that this evening. In the next day or two I’ll have my goals list for the summer clinical in order. I already know that I’m hoping to get a majority of my fluoro comps completed. I’m very happy with the opportunity to be in an outpatient center at this point because we just finished up our fluoro stuff in lab at school at the end of the spring semester, and I’m ready to start working on comps for those procedures.

Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow night at some point to post some preliminary thoughts on the new clinical site…