We all know how sorely under-represented Radiography is as a profession.
Underappreciated, underacknowledged for the training we go through, and often times the brunt of misplaced anger in the workplace by other healthcare workers.
Well, this NYC Radiographer, Josemery Brito, did a terrific job representing what we do as a profession and I’m amazed at how articulate she is on camera.
I will replace this version with a higher quality version when I can find it.
I appreciate the facts that are represented in this interview:
the radiographer works at TWO hospitals.
As so often is the case for technologists, multiple PRN jobs are needed to gain full-time work in big cities like NYC. This is a great experience for the technologist to see the workflow from two different perspectives.
But it also means there is a chance that benefits such as health insurance and paid time off (PTO) are not being enjoyed. While those benefits can be had at part-time (PRN) status, it usually comes at a higher premium.
I think the time has come for hospitals to offer benefits to all employees at the same rate, regardless of status. Oftentimes PRN employees work upwards of 40 hours (or more) per week.
Offering a higher pay in lieu of benefits is a cop-out for the hospitals. It also causes a disparity in pay as PRN technologists get paid more to do the same work the full-time technologists are doing.
It is also usually these PRN technologists who fill in the gaps when full-time or part-time employees leave the system. An equal treatment system would be better in the long run.
The radiographer points out that technologists see every patient just as much (if not more) than the nurses and doctors.
How many times have we performed imaging on patients in the emergency room or triage area that haven’t even been seen by the doctor yet?
A triage nurse determines the patients need a certain xray based on a protocol. The patient is here for a laceration on their elbow? That triggers an elbow xray, by protocol, before the physician even sees the patient.
The argument is that it gives the physician more information when the patient is finally seen. The argument from the technologists’ side is that the doctor may not have ordered the radiation if the patient was actually examined by the doctor first.
Not every cut and bump needs an xray. Also, nurses can’t technically prescribe an xray just like they can’t prescribe medication. The physician is the only one who can do that. The exception is when the triage nurse is a Nurse Practitioner or a Physician Assistant (PA).
Nurses cover a handful of patients in a unit. A doctor may cover the whole unit. But we (radiographers) cover the ENTIRE HOSPITAL.
This is one of the main points that people, including other healthcare workers, don’t appreciate. Radiographers have to be skilled to a point where we can work in a variety of settings both inside AND outside the hospital:
operating room, post op, icu, emergency room, telemetry floor, medical floor, pediatric units, neonatal units, psychiatric units, behavioral units, geriatric units, orthopedic practices, urgent cares, outpatient imaging clinics…
just some of the many places we have to cover
traditional xray rooms, RF (fluoroscopy) rooms, portable xray machines, c-arm machines (large ii and minis), o-arms for surgeries, interventional rooms…
just some of the equipment we have to skilled to use
Radiographers go through extensive training and complete hundreds of hours in unpaid clinical rotations to learn our skills.
And if we’re lucky, really lucky, hospital administration will allow us to enjoy National Radiologic Technologist Week in November in our own departments.
But sadly, this often isn’t allowed.
- MSNBC still gets it wrong and subtitles the interview with “Radiologist…”
Will the world ever finally understand that an -ologist is a physician?! Apparently not. Not even during a RADIOGRAPHER interview where they repeated say the word RADIOGRAPHER and even use it in subtitles a few times.
SMH.
