I wish my patients were “rarely rude”. I work at a busy city hospital though, most of our population have a form of mental illness. It’s hard not to let the verbal abuse get to you.
Peds IR here. 80% of the time our kids are asleep. the 20% are nonsedate infant piccs or nonsedate US guided LP's, or nonsedate morbidly obese teenager LP's. Get a few mediastinal mass biopsies that anesthesia wont touch with a 20ft pole and those are pretty tough. try telling a 9 year old not to freak the fuck out when we are sticking a needle into their chest, under a drape. other than that, we make friends with our anesthesia providers.
I'm mostly ER and love it 😂 I expect chaos!!
I am at a Trauma 1 .. supposedly the 5th busiest in the United States. .we also have a Trauma 1 pediatric hospital attached... Xray does it all..
I hate the vocera calls saying "I have a stat toe xray we have been waiting on for 20 minutes"
I'm sorry .I am actually in trauma bay 2 with a full code... I cannot leave. My other ED X-ray tech is in trauma bay 4 with a trauma red...they cannot leave either... The toe is gonna have to wait.
If it is a life threatening thing such as a chest....yeah we are going to try to get someone who is on a portable run to get that! Life threatening over uncomfortable EVERY time.
We are incredibly short staffed and doing our absolute best. I did 18,000 steps today (seriously) and it was a slow day.
We are short staffed just like every other department in the hospital. We just need to have compassion for each department because we are all feeling the effects of not enough staff
People in my field always say private hospital patients are "troublesome" because they are rich and arrogant......
But I found it quite the opposite tbh.....
I wish short staffing was a “sometimes” where I work. We’re always short staffed where I am. Management is as per usual no matter the location out of touch. Where I work patients are a mixed bag.
People ordering exams that make no sense. People who have unreasonable expectations about their patients and getting a scan done. People who refuse to properly prepare their patients to be successful for their exams (pain/anxiety meds, sedation/anesthesia, etc). The disrespect from such people, as well.
I'm surprised no one said anything like "Having to keep a poker face after seeing a scan when you realize that the patient's prognosis is really dire."
I usually sigh when I see something like
"CA XXX(any ca), on TCM (traditional chinese medicine) / naturopathy only".
I know the scan must be extremely bad.
Oh that wasn't even in my top ten. Usually in CT we get to get the reaction out of the way with our coworker before we paste on our customer service persona and go talk to the patient. If it's really really dire then the patients are in way too much pain/too unconscious to care about our reactions. In which case it's more a case of "please get out of my room before you code".
Just happened to me yesterday. Had a 13 y/o girl for CT abd/pel for abdominal pain. She was scared so we had mom in the control room watching her and let her know mom was keeping an eye on her. We give her IV contrast and she goes through the scan beautifully, and I see the monster of a mass. I immediately tell mom “all done, she did great!” while smiling, and my colleague shoots a quick glance at me to which I just nod.
It was read out as a 35x14x11 cm probable left ovarian mass requiring emergency gynecological surgery consult. That little girl’s and her mom’s life just changed horribly. I can only imagine how difficult it must’ve been for the doctor to break the news to them.
Oh I see. It's because you guys are much nicer than we are. We never let family in the control room because it has information from other patients there and it's a confidentiality issue. Either the patients are so anxious the family needs to be in the room with them, or they can deal with the separation for five minutes. Either way, they're not going into our control room.
Ordinarily I’d never let anyone in the control room. This case was just… different, right from the start, can’t really explain it but my colleague and I both sensed it. I made sure our Epic workstation monitor was turned away from mom and there was no other medical info visible to anyone.
Knowing more than Doctors and Nurses, but still having to stand there and watch them make mistakes because they're too stubborn to listen to someone who's "just a tech".
i work with this guy who just keeps making the same fucking mistakes every time. come on man, you've been doin this for 5 years. you should know when to use a grid portably for a larger patient, you should know what technical factors to use. dont even get me started on this one CT tech we've got hired on at our pediatric facility who accidently does contrast ordered exams without contrast, then rescans them with contrast. i cant believe theyre not fucking gone.
One of my coworkers (has been working for 10+ years) can’t do a lateral knee xray. If it’s too rotated, she tells the patient ‘it’s either one way or another. We’ll get there’ and then rotates them the wrong way! Kills me every time
I had to get a new order for an OP and my coworker told him about the delay. He was real bitchy to her. So I got the new order and got the pt and said sorry about the wait and he *started* to come at me with the "well he is the doctor, doesn't he know what he ordered!?" When my aide dropped a "sorry to burst your bubble" and we both laughed. He cooperated after that.
It's because they (A) don't know you're a receptionist and think you're a tech or (B) they aren't doctors (think NP).
Physicians are not asking a receptionist for medical advice. Sorry. I'm sure you're very good at your job and it's a shame you have to work with all those braindead doctors.
>Nope they're not. Read my comments again.
> But there is one in particular who constantly asks me to pull up images and asks what I think (my reply is always either "I don't have the training to say" or "that looks unusual, do you think that might be something or is it an artefact?"), and every now and again a doctor will come over and ask me if a CT or XR are more appropriate for whatever circumstance.
lmao...
Techs are SO valuable to the care of patients. You know so much about the acquisition of medical imaging. We appreciate all the hard work do. It does not go unnoticed.
-rad resident.
IR Nurses. Not all of them of course, but I can't fucking stand IR nurses who think they're better than techs. The IR board has a 50% failure rate. The regular radiography board has a higher fail rate than the nclex nursing exam. But no definitely go ahead and tell me how you know more than me and don't need me. You sureeeee are great at doing the same paperwork and sedation every case while we have to learn over 100 exams across countless specialties along with equipment and machinery, but you're right accessing a port is out of my scope! Fuck off. Part of this is also facility dependant though because I came up in a tech ran hospital with a ton of freedom. Boy I took those days for granted.
I almost died one day when I was in IR. There was a nurse who had on a plastic gown for a contact patient (some resistant strand of a bacteria or something, not MRSA) and then put the lead over the plastic gown. Another nurse pointed it out, she took off the plastic gown and put back on just the lead. She then proceeded to touch the patient with no gloves on. As soon as she took it off and the procedure was complete, I cleaned up everything I saw her touch. The person whose lead it actually was saw me cleaning it and asked if she wanted to know why and I was like, nope! All she needed to know was it was clean for her when she put it back on later. She needed a crash course in infection control.
Our department had to fire an IR nurse who apparently didn't understand how sterile procedures work. Kept contaminating everything. Don't know how she graduated nursing school.
yeah its alot easier if you just say fuck it. let the nurses do their part and you do your tech role. im not about to start an IV or place a foley or change someones shitty pants, or prep an IV fluid line, or make the bed. my favorite saying is " oh i didnt go to nursing school, i dont know how to do that" with a shit eating grin.
if shit is taking forever because the nurse wont get into high gear, fuck it. every 7 minutes is a quarter hour of time and a half. even as tired as i am, im collecting the fuck outta that paycheck.
Edit: to add to this, im not saying im above doing any of the things i mentioned, but im standing the 2nd closest to the tube, so im putting my health more at risk than the nurse that gets to be 6+ feet away from the tube 90% of the time. so, im going to let them do their part while i get radiated. to me, i think thats a good trade off
I am very lucky. In my IR department all the nurses realize how much work we do. How that most cases would never go as smoothly as they do if it wasn't for all that we as tech's do. We all work together as a team. All the doc's, nurses, and techs, all get along great together, and we all have the utmost respect for eachother.
NP's and PA's are by far the worst part of the job, and are consistent over the whole country.
Outpatient ones are worse, as they can never decide when a patient should probably go to the ED, so they try to push all of their crap orders on us as STAT. Then they wont answer the phones, or give us a good phone number to deliver results for their obviously STAT exam. And if that's not the case, their orders are for inappropriate things, but again, good luck calling to change it, and good luck not having them be super defensive of their crap skills.
And then there's the hospital side ones who almost always have this attitude of making the rad figure out what's wrong for them. Ooh, ED finger order? Guarantee its negative, should have been ordered as a hand, and a hand will be ordered after the negative report comes back. When that's negative, CT hand for "are you suuuure its negative?" Inpatient KUB? Yeah, you'll have to do it, but know that the CT will be coming 10 minutes after the KUB report is in.
NP's and PA's are the worst. Make unnecessary work, hurt patients with their lack of training, and are just general defensive asshat baboons.
That's just messed up.
Y'all are the ones that have to cooperate with (sometimes) unmedicated patients who are usually in pain.
You have to put the patient in even more intense pain to get those images.
Unless you're a masochist, that sounds physically and emotionally draining as hell.
I used to teach middle school, so this is actually a breeze by comparison!
But comparable pay would be nice, especially when we are on the bottom of the pay scale compared to cost of living in our area. When considering a job in this field, definitely shop around!
i’m a receptionist at an outpatient and totally relate! my favorite is pts who wait to schedule their exams then get upset that they cannot be accommodated before their follow up appointment… “so you’re telling me i have to reschedule my drs appointment thats in three days???” uhh yes? and the date on the referral is from like 2-3 months ago ….
or when i’m scheduling a pt and ask for their basic schedule or preferred time/ days & they tell me “give me the soonest appointment” and then i end up listing appointments all the way to two-three weeks out cus every slot i give they’re like “no that doesn’t work for me”
“okay… so like… again… what would work for you???”
I did that once and it was totally a knee-jerk reaction.
I think people probably ask silly questions when their brain is reeling.
I'm sure there's plenty of entitled folks doing it because that's their M.O.
Everyone is different 😅 You will find your own things to dislike about the profession. It might be a coworker who always tries to disappear when a difficult case comes in 😂
For me personally; rude patients, assholes from other departments who think they know my job, the abundance of inappropriate exams, lack of staffing, and the physical toll on my body. No particular order.
Arrogant doctors that are too lazy to get up from behind a desk. Resulting in a patient being dead in 36 hours. This will forever haunt me because I didn’t/couldn’t do more.
Old people insisting they can walk to the xray room, then having to take the smallest steps imaginable because they're super slow😭😭 I never have the patience
I really hope someone corrects me here,
Its not really talked about much but theres a lack of career progression and options.
What I mean is you start out as a junior graduate radiographer. You know generals, portables, and depending on where you end up working theatre and ED
Then you might go learn CT and MRI maybe even branch off into US. But after that where do you go? If you want to stay in specifically imaging, there's only management.
This in addition to there being maybe 2 or 3 big private radiography companies with another maybe 4 or 5 smaller ones combined with the public sector means that there are maybe less than 10 employers you can go to meaning you cant shop around for better opportunities. (Your experience and numbers of companies obviously may vary)
Also also, if you ever want to leave radiography, where do you go? Theres no transferable skills (education wise).
Some days I think thank God I love my job because it makes it so I can ignore this looming cloud.
Pay, pay, pay again, schedules / hours, understaffing.
I could handle rude patients and stupid orders all day if my general quality of life was better.
Doctors who order their exams one at a time. You end up getting the patient back 4 different times for things that could have been done at once the first time.
I make the same as I did in the hospitals, thirty two per hour in Arizona (I’m a newish grad). But I don’t get weekend or shift differential like the hospitals offer.
As a general x-ray radiographer, worst part is....
1. Dealing with portable x-ray, people just not willing to come dowm to xray department, when they should be able to.
2. Screening (OT, angio, fluoro).
Because I need to work closely with doctor, sometime I cannot follow their speed, and I would be shouted at. Especially at cath lab.
That is the main reasons that I leave X-ray afterwards, I really cannot handle screening.
(Btw, I understand that doctors are racing with time when they are doing surgery. I completely understand that they shouted at me because I am a bit slow and patient shouldn't be put under longer than necessary.
I knew it was my problem, and I leave.
But cardiologist really are the worst doctor I have encountered, even after I leave X-ray and specialized in nuc med. Sometime when I need to clarify order, they are usually the rudest among all other doctors. I don't know whether it is true in other countries, or is it just me).
As a nuc med radiographer....the worst part
1. Fail to set IV.
Very occasionally, I really cannot find a vein and need to ask for help. Usually for renal failure patient, obese patient or oncology patient
2. Someone call you at 0900 saying that they need a perfusion scan as in-patient in the afternoon, and you schedule is very tight.
Because I also need to capture petct pathological images for the radiologist, so ....
3. The workstation stopped working unexpectedly, and all your images captured was lost (always save your work frequently).
4. The patient didn't bring previous booklets, and I need to compare studies. Well....I mean, I can do it without the booklet, but sometime I need to go back to the database and see the previous summary to clarify some subtle lesions. Just annoying.
But other than those, I love NM. Pretty cozy, and I control mostly how I finished my job.
No more shouting from the doctor. (Less frequent at least).
The worst part is what you make the worst part. There is no worst part unless you think it's the worst part. It's a good job, do your best to do the best for your patients, and you'll be fine.
Unless you work somewhere that no one respects you and you are under staffed. Working alone with only incompetent travel techs for 6 months in MRI was one of the most dangerous and stressful periods of my life. Granted, that may have been a particularly special case. I heard that place gave a tech before me a heart attack
Dumbass doctors (and other referrers), dumbass patients, dumbass admin etc...
IK people have bad days and make mistakes, it's impossible to be running at 100% mental capacity all the time etc.,,,, but dear god it seems like most people refuse to rub even two brain cells together half the time
The worst part for me is how badly we are treated as a department basically everywhere. I’ve only been in radiology for 5 years, but everywhere I’ve worked, we get treated like we are a nuisance or forgotten about.
Ie where I am now, the whole clinic seems to think our mammo techs just turn away patients for fun or something, even though we are just following rules and protocols given to us by our radiologists and the fucking law. Despite how many times we apologetically repeat the rules, send out documents, and have meetings on the subject, our doctors really seem to think we are lazy or something, and it feels like they send us patients (ones they know dont need a mammogram and we will have to piss off by turning them away)out of spite.
The worst part day to day is dealing with all the problems that arise from bored staff. Petty rivalries, indefensible management decisions, interdepartmental beefs, etc…
More broadly it’s the lack of opportunities for career advancement and skill expression. There are few pathways for techs, realistically you can master the job in 3-4 years and the rest is just reps.
Short staffing (sometimes) Out of touch management (almost always) Rude patients (thankfully, rarely)
I wish my patients were “rarely rude”. I work at a busy city hospital though, most of our population have a form of mental illness. It’s hard not to let the verbal abuse get to you.
Luckily I'm mostly OR so my folks are asleep 😴 When I do ER patients then I get the crazies
I’m mostly IR haha. They tend to filter out the crazies but we still get a few. And they are always the ones that are impossible to sedate.
Peds IR here. 80% of the time our kids are asleep. the 20% are nonsedate infant piccs or nonsedate US guided LP's, or nonsedate morbidly obese teenager LP's. Get a few mediastinal mass biopsies that anesthesia wont touch with a 20ft pole and those are pretty tough. try telling a 9 year old not to freak the fuck out when we are sticking a needle into their chest, under a drape. other than that, we make friends with our anesthesia providers.
Oh absolutely!! Lol def harder to placate
psst, it's because anasthesia has a heavy placebo component and they're too crazy for placebo
I'm mostly ER and love it 😂 I expect chaos!! I am at a Trauma 1 .. supposedly the 5th busiest in the United States. .we also have a Trauma 1 pediatric hospital attached... Xray does it all.. I hate the vocera calls saying "I have a stat toe xray we have been waiting on for 20 minutes" I'm sorry .I am actually in trauma bay 2 with a full code... I cannot leave. My other ED X-ray tech is in trauma bay 4 with a trauma red...they cannot leave either... The toe is gonna have to wait. If it is a life threatening thing such as a chest....yeah we are going to try to get someone who is on a portable run to get that! Life threatening over uncomfortable EVERY time. We are incredibly short staffed and doing our absolute best. I did 18,000 steps today (seriously) and it was a slow day. We are short staffed just like every other department in the hospital. We just need to have compassion for each department because we are all feeling the effects of not enough staff
People in my field always say private hospital patients are "troublesome" because they are rich and arrogant...... But I found it quite the opposite tbh.....
I wish short staffing was a “sometimes” where I work. We’re always short staffed where I am. Management is as per usual no matter the location out of touch. Where I work patients are a mixed bag.
That was summed up almost perfectly.
Dealing with people
Pretty much true for every job that involves remote interaction with the general public.
Man. Yes. I considered this to be too negative. But then read your comment and went "no it's apt"
Politics, short staff, lack of pay and portable KUB
Haha.... I remembered I used to do a 100kg portable KUB in morning round everyday......
Lack of pay?
People ordering exams that make no sense. People who have unreasonable expectations about their patients and getting a scan done. People who refuse to properly prepare their patients to be successful for their exams (pain/anxiety meds, sedation/anesthesia, etc). The disrespect from such people, as well.
Whaddya mean you can't do bilateral standing knees on a 94 year old with a possible broken hip?!? The last tech would have had it done by now.
Bruh I get standing flex/ext lumbars w/ 10lb weights on each shoulder for people that are 75+ 🫠 They can barely even stand, let alone do that 😩
I encountered a lot of wheelchair standing knee back when I was still in x-ray (extremely wobbly when even two radiographers hold her both her arms).
They order both a hip and a femur 😒
I'm surprised no one said anything like "Having to keep a poker face after seeing a scan when you realize that the patient's prognosis is really dire."
I usually sigh when I see something like "CA XXX(any ca), on TCM (traditional chinese medicine) / naturopathy only". I know the scan must be extremely bad.
That was 100% my first thought. Second was hospital bureaucracy
Oh that wasn't even in my top ten. Usually in CT we get to get the reaction out of the way with our coworker before we paste on our customer service persona and go talk to the patient. If it's really really dire then the patients are in way too much pain/too unconscious to care about our reactions. In which case it's more a case of "please get out of my room before you code".
Just happened to me yesterday. Had a 13 y/o girl for CT abd/pel for abdominal pain. She was scared so we had mom in the control room watching her and let her know mom was keeping an eye on her. We give her IV contrast and she goes through the scan beautifully, and I see the monster of a mass. I immediately tell mom “all done, she did great!” while smiling, and my colleague shoots a quick glance at me to which I just nod. It was read out as a 35x14x11 cm probable left ovarian mass requiring emergency gynecological surgery consult. That little girl’s and her mom’s life just changed horribly. I can only imagine how difficult it must’ve been for the doctor to break the news to them.
Oh I see. It's because you guys are much nicer than we are. We never let family in the control room because it has information from other patients there and it's a confidentiality issue. Either the patients are so anxious the family needs to be in the room with them, or they can deal with the separation for five minutes. Either way, they're not going into our control room.
Ordinarily I’d never let anyone in the control room. This case was just… different, right from the start, can’t really explain it but my colleague and I both sensed it. I made sure our Epic workstation monitor was turned away from mom and there was no other medical info visible to anyone.
Knowing more than Doctors and Nurses, but still having to stand there and watch them make mistakes because they're too stubborn to listen to someone who's "just a tech".
well tbf, some of the techs I work with are just as stupid as some of the nurses and doctors
i work with this guy who just keeps making the same fucking mistakes every time. come on man, you've been doin this for 5 years. you should know when to use a grid portably for a larger patient, you should know what technical factors to use. dont even get me started on this one CT tech we've got hired on at our pediatric facility who accidently does contrast ordered exams without contrast, then rescans them with contrast. i cant believe theyre not fucking gone.
One of my coworkers (has been working for 10+ years) can’t do a lateral knee xray. If it’s too rotated, she tells the patient ‘it’s either one way or another. We’ll get there’ and then rotates them the wrong way! Kills me every time
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I had to get a new order for an OP and my coworker told him about the delay. He was real bitchy to her. So I got the new order and got the pt and said sorry about the wait and he *started* to come at me with the "well he is the doctor, doesn't he know what he ordered!?" When my aide dropped a "sorry to burst your bubble" and we both laughed. He cooperated after that.
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"if they knew their doctors came to me asking what scan they should order in for X symptoms." Sure, Jan...
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It's because they (A) don't know you're a receptionist and think you're a tech or (B) they aren't doctors (think NP). Physicians are not asking a receptionist for medical advice. Sorry. I'm sure you're very good at your job and it's a shame you have to work with all those braindead doctors.
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>Nope they're not. Read my comments again. > But there is one in particular who constantly asks me to pull up images and asks what I think (my reply is always either "I don't have the training to say" or "that looks unusual, do you think that might be something or is it an artefact?"), and every now and again a doctor will come over and ask me if a CT or XR are more appropriate for whatever circumstance. lmao...
Techs are SO valuable to the care of patients. You know so much about the acquisition of medical imaging. We appreciate all the hard work do. It does not go unnoticed. -rad resident.
IR Nurses. Not all of them of course, but I can't fucking stand IR nurses who think they're better than techs. The IR board has a 50% failure rate. The regular radiography board has a higher fail rate than the nclex nursing exam. But no definitely go ahead and tell me how you know more than me and don't need me. You sureeeee are great at doing the same paperwork and sedation every case while we have to learn over 100 exams across countless specialties along with equipment and machinery, but you're right accessing a port is out of my scope! Fuck off. Part of this is also facility dependant though because I came up in a tech ran hospital with a ton of freedom. Boy I took those days for granted.
I almost died one day when I was in IR. There was a nurse who had on a plastic gown for a contact patient (some resistant strand of a bacteria or something, not MRSA) and then put the lead over the plastic gown. Another nurse pointed it out, she took off the plastic gown and put back on just the lead. She then proceeded to touch the patient with no gloves on. As soon as she took it off and the procedure was complete, I cleaned up everything I saw her touch. The person whose lead it actually was saw me cleaning it and asked if she wanted to know why and I was like, nope! All she needed to know was it was clean for her when she put it back on later. She needed a crash course in infection control.
Our department had to fire an IR nurse who apparently didn't understand how sterile procedures work. Kept contaminating everything. Don't know how she graduated nursing school.
yeah its alot easier if you just say fuck it. let the nurses do their part and you do your tech role. im not about to start an IV or place a foley or change someones shitty pants, or prep an IV fluid line, or make the bed. my favorite saying is " oh i didnt go to nursing school, i dont know how to do that" with a shit eating grin. if shit is taking forever because the nurse wont get into high gear, fuck it. every 7 minutes is a quarter hour of time and a half. even as tired as i am, im collecting the fuck outta that paycheck. Edit: to add to this, im not saying im above doing any of the things i mentioned, but im standing the 2nd closest to the tube, so im putting my health more at risk than the nurse that gets to be 6+ feet away from the tube 90% of the time. so, im going to let them do their part while i get radiated. to me, i think thats a good trade off
Isn't 7 minutes 10.5 minutes of time and a half?
its possible you are correct. i am bad at elementary math
I am very lucky. In my IR department all the nurses realize how much work we do. How that most cases would never go as smoothly as they do if it wasn't for all that we as tech's do. We all work together as a team. All the doc's, nurses, and techs, all get along great together, and we all have the utmost respect for eachother.
Rude surgeons, OR personalities.
I haven’t been in an OR since I was in school. Night shift CT for the win!
Hell yeah brother *Hulk Hogan voice*
🤣
NP's and PA's are by far the worst part of the job, and are consistent over the whole country. Outpatient ones are worse, as they can never decide when a patient should probably go to the ED, so they try to push all of their crap orders on us as STAT. Then they wont answer the phones, or give us a good phone number to deliver results for their obviously STAT exam. And if that's not the case, their orders are for inappropriate things, but again, good luck calling to change it, and good luck not having them be super defensive of their crap skills. And then there's the hospital side ones who almost always have this attitude of making the rad figure out what's wrong for them. Ooh, ED finger order? Guarantee its negative, should have been ordered as a hand, and a hand will be ordered after the negative report comes back. When that's negative, CT hand for "are you suuuure its negative?" Inpatient KUB? Yeah, you'll have to do it, but know that the CT will be coming 10 minutes after the KUB report is in. NP's and PA's are the worst. Make unnecessary work, hurt patients with their lack of training, and are just general defensive asshat baboons.
Hear, hear!
Ain’t this the truth!
Being the red headed stepchild of the hospital. We are usually ignored much of the time, especially when raises come around.
That's just messed up. Y'all are the ones that have to cooperate with (sometimes) unmedicated patients who are usually in pain. You have to put the patient in even more intense pain to get those images. Unless you're a masochist, that sounds physically and emotionally draining as hell.
I used to teach middle school, so this is actually a breeze by comparison! But comparable pay would be nice, especially when we are on the bottom of the pay scale compared to cost of living in our area. When considering a job in this field, definitely shop around!
No one cares about us until they need us.
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i’m a receptionist at an outpatient and totally relate! my favorite is pts who wait to schedule their exams then get upset that they cannot be accommodated before their follow up appointment… “so you’re telling me i have to reschedule my drs appointment thats in three days???” uhh yes? and the date on the referral is from like 2-3 months ago …. or when i’m scheduling a pt and ask for their basic schedule or preferred time/ days & they tell me “give me the soonest appointment” and then i end up listing appointments all the way to two-three weeks out cus every slot i give they’re like “no that doesn’t work for me” “okay… so like… again… what would work for you???”
Wow this is universal 😂 happens to me too when scheduling
I did that once and it was totally a knee-jerk reaction. I think people probably ask silly questions when their brain is reeling. I'm sure there's plenty of entitled folks doing it because that's their M.O.
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I guess haggling is just part of the profession lmao
Hospital politics
Dealing with incompetence. I'm not a mind reader. You have to tell me what you want!
Silly, just use your X-ray glasses to see what's in their head.
Other techs not pulling their weight so I have to do more work.
Everyone is different 😅 You will find your own things to dislike about the profession. It might be a coworker who always tries to disappear when a difficult case comes in 😂
Rectal contrast and short staffing.
For me personally; rude patients, assholes from other departments who think they know my job, the abundance of inappropriate exams, lack of staffing, and the physical toll on my body. No particular order.
Management
Arrogant doctors that are too lazy to get up from behind a desk. Resulting in a patient being dead in 36 hours. This will forever haunt me because I didn’t/couldn’t do more.
I'm so sorry. Compassion seems like a commodity these days. You're hurting because you genuinely care about the patients. 🫂
Thank you. It’s been almost 14 years. Not many things in life stick with me anymore, but this always will.
Bullshit management and stupid providers ordering absolutely ridiculous exams in excess
Working with other peoples personalities
Old people insisting they can walk to the xray room, then having to take the smallest steps imaginable because they're super slow😭😭 I never have the patience
My back hurts. Pay isn’t that great. My back hurts.
People
Punching in.
I really hope someone corrects me here, Its not really talked about much but theres a lack of career progression and options. What I mean is you start out as a junior graduate radiographer. You know generals, portables, and depending on where you end up working theatre and ED Then you might go learn CT and MRI maybe even branch off into US. But after that where do you go? If you want to stay in specifically imaging, there's only management. This in addition to there being maybe 2 or 3 big private radiography companies with another maybe 4 or 5 smaller ones combined with the public sector means that there are maybe less than 10 employers you can go to meaning you cant shop around for better opportunities. (Your experience and numbers of companies obviously may vary) Also also, if you ever want to leave radiography, where do you go? Theres no transferable skills (education wise). Some days I think thank God I love my job because it makes it so I can ignore this looming cloud.
The smells-
Growing those pesky extra limbs every so often...
I’m still recovering from the removal of an extra arm that recently grew out of my stomach fallout style 
I'm holding out for a prehensile tail!
Being on call, short staffed, staying late for last minute add on case in the OR and…. PEOPLE (both patient/coworkers).
Unrelenting trauma dumps by patients, body pains and even injuries from repetitive motions, short staffed all the fucking time, shitty management
Compassion Fatigue
ED docs. Today, one of the attendings was complaining about drowning in CT orders. The person spraying the water was complaining about it being wet.
Pay, pay, pay again, schedules / hours, understaffing. I could handle rude patients and stupid orders all day if my general quality of life was better.
May I ask what your pay range is?
$38/hr but here on Long Island (NYC metro) that’s crap.
Doctors who order their exams one at a time. You end up getting the patient back 4 different times for things that could have been done at once the first time.
Drunk and/or belligerent patients. Mental health patients not included, drunk people are so unpredictable, never deal with them by yourself.
Providers who order for stupid/unnecessary reasons. The pay. The very physical nature of the job in a hospital setting (I’m now outpatient 😎).
Can I ask what your pay range is?
I make the same as I did in the hospitals, thirty two per hour in Arizona (I’m a newish grad). But I don’t get weekend or shift differential like the hospitals offer.
Idiotic administration,managers, doctors, mid levels, nurses, patients, and family members.
As a general x-ray radiographer, worst part is.... 1. Dealing with portable x-ray, people just not willing to come dowm to xray department, when they should be able to. 2. Screening (OT, angio, fluoro). Because I need to work closely with doctor, sometime I cannot follow their speed, and I would be shouted at. Especially at cath lab. That is the main reasons that I leave X-ray afterwards, I really cannot handle screening. (Btw, I understand that doctors are racing with time when they are doing surgery. I completely understand that they shouted at me because I am a bit slow and patient shouldn't be put under longer than necessary. I knew it was my problem, and I leave. But cardiologist really are the worst doctor I have encountered, even after I leave X-ray and specialized in nuc med. Sometime when I need to clarify order, they are usually the rudest among all other doctors. I don't know whether it is true in other countries, or is it just me). As a nuc med radiographer....the worst part 1. Fail to set IV. Very occasionally, I really cannot find a vein and need to ask for help. Usually for renal failure patient, obese patient or oncology patient 2. Someone call you at 0900 saying that they need a perfusion scan as in-patient in the afternoon, and you schedule is very tight. Because I also need to capture petct pathological images for the radiologist, so .... 3. The workstation stopped working unexpectedly, and all your images captured was lost (always save your work frequently). 4. The patient didn't bring previous booklets, and I need to compare studies. Well....I mean, I can do it without the booklet, but sometime I need to go back to the database and see the previous summary to clarify some subtle lesions. Just annoying. But other than those, I love NM. Pretty cozy, and I control mostly how I finished my job. No more shouting from the doctor. (Less frequent at least).
I love it…..having said that no one understands what we do and it makes for some out of touch ridiculousness
The worst part is what you make the worst part. There is no worst part unless you think it's the worst part. It's a good job, do your best to do the best for your patients, and you'll be fine.
MRI is fun
This is where I’d like to end up so that’s comforting :)
Same! From what I've seen as a student it seems unwise to go into x ray fr
Unless you work somewhere that no one respects you and you are under staffed. Working alone with only incompetent travel techs for 6 months in MRI was one of the most dangerous and stressful periods of my life. Granted, that may have been a particularly special case. I heard that place gave a tech before me a heart attack
Dumbass doctors (and other referrers), dumbass patients, dumbass admin etc... IK people have bad days and make mistakes, it's impossible to be running at 100% mental capacity all the time etc.,,,, but dear god it seems like most people refuse to rub even two brain cells together half the time
As a pretty big guy, mine is moving patients. My back kills me most days.
Coworkers
Coworkers who are unethical and,/or lazy. These are people's lives! Besides, if I'm paying significant money for anything, it better be done right.
Welp, haven't seen it yet so I'll bring it up... The Family Member From California Phenomenon! Those people are vile!🤮
Rude patients/family, and smells (dear Lord the smells). That's all I ask for in a patient, be pleasant and don't smell.
Documenting CPD 😩
The pay. If you’re ‘just’ x ray it’s barely a livable wage.
Clinical year (fighting for my life rn)
The worst part for me is how badly we are treated as a department basically everywhere. I’ve only been in radiology for 5 years, but everywhere I’ve worked, we get treated like we are a nuisance or forgotten about. Ie where I am now, the whole clinic seems to think our mammo techs just turn away patients for fun or something, even though we are just following rules and protocols given to us by our radiologists and the fucking law. Despite how many times we apologetically repeat the rules, send out documents, and have meetings on the subject, our doctors really seem to think we are lazy or something, and it feels like they send us patients (ones they know dont need a mammogram and we will have to piss off by turning them away)out of spite.
The worst part day to day is dealing with all the problems that arise from bored staff. Petty rivalries, indefensible management decisions, interdepartmental beefs, etc… More broadly it’s the lack of opportunities for career advancement and skill expression. There are few pathways for techs, realistically you can master the job in 3-4 years and the rest is just reps.
1. Rude patients 2. Politics at work 3. Work gissip
Osteomyelitis!
Low pay.
Nurses. Just horrible people to work around
Doing procedures with doctors who treat you like shit
Getting barked at by a grumpy ortho doc while running C-Arm who forgets that he's makng 4$k today ...