Finished My Comps!!!!!!

Well I am so relieved that I was able to finish my comps, it's been a struggle but I did it. I was able to comp out on a knee, C-spine, and L-spine. I have one more day of clinicals this semester and I am finished. It has been a very interesting, fun and stressful semester and I feel that I have learned allot but I know I have so much more to learn. My clinical site has invited me to stay and do my Fall clinicals with them and have re-arranged a new schedule so I will be training with the lead tech 2 days a week which will give me better consistency, and I think this will make the learning of each exam a little bit easier. I was switching between 3 different techs and I was getting very confused with the different ways they would all tweak the perameters. At first I thought that would be a good thing, but after doing it for awhile I was interchanging all their different ways, which made it very confusing for me. So I am glad for the change. I really like my facility and it is so convenient for me being it is only about 5 minutes away. I wish I had it so easy with work, but I guess we can't have everything all the time.

This week on top of my last comp, I was able to see some different exams that the tech said they did not do very much. One was an MRA of the renal arteries and the other was a lower extremity run off. The lower extremity run off was the very rare exam. I only got to see part of it due to the patient was claustrophobic and could not do the first part after the injection. We did do the exam of the lower legs using the abdomen coil and picked out the best image showing the arteries and then watched the flow and tried to time it using a calculation she called FBI. She stated it was something that Toshiba had special and that is one of the reasons they picked Toshiba 1.5 over the other brands of magnets. It was pretty interesting how she calculated it and then she would compare it to the scans done after the injection. She explained that the scans done after the injection would start in the Abd. and then capture the flow all the way to the toes. We saved the leg scan without and will retrieve it when the patient comes back with sedation next week to finish the scans with contrast. I might go in to see the rest of it just for the learning experience. Well for now have a good weekend and I will post later.

New Experiences

Well this week has been challenging. I got to experience our first nasty patient. I didn't really have to handle the whole situation but I was involved more then I wanted to be. This individual patient had an aneurysm clip in his brain that was placed in 1998 and did not have a card for it. I had gone out to get the patient and collect his history when I became aware of this info. I then explained I was training and that the decision would be left to lead tech according their policy. My tech which is the lead MR tech explained for safety reasons for him, that she would not perform the exam. He threw a fit in the waiting room cussing at her in front of the other patients and intern left. She had explained the procedure in length and the problems that could arise and he insisted that he had previously had an MRI and everything went fine. She asked if he would like to talk to the Radiologist or her Boss and he stormed out screaming no and a few other choice words. Then he preceded to contact the Director by phone later in the day. All in all he did come back the next morning for the MRI in which another tech performed it and he stated that he did not want to see the lead tech again and that she was very unprofessional and nasty, which was totally a lie. I wasn't quite sure what was explained to him by the Director but I felt sorry for the lead tech, who was just following the policy that had been laid out. I hope the Director explained it was policy and that she was following protocol and that she spent the entire rest of the afternoon investigating his clip to find out if it was MRI safe. Oh well I suppose this is the first of many instances that this will happen, but I really had to bite my tongue. It was definitely a learning experience, especially on how the tech went about tracking all the info down. However, I am very amazed on how many people don't know what they have had done or do not carry cards with them on their stents or hardware that they have.

On a better note I have accomplished two of my comps and am going to try and get the last one this coming week. I am really getting to scan allot however only one of the techs will comp me out and I don't get to scan with her as often. I did get to see a breast MR and that was very interesting. It seemed to be very involved, much more so then the other exams I have experienced, it will be awhile before I try that one. I seem to deal with the different spine examinations the best. I was able to scan an MRA of the brain and carotids the other day (with help), we also had to do an MRI of the brain and neck, which made for a very long exam. The patient surprisingly did very well. Well I have got to go school shopping for my son so I will give more updates soon. Have a great weekend!