Merry Christmas!

Well, I hope everyone had a great semester! I am ready for a little break before the Spring semester begins.

We've had a bit of a bad luck run on illness in CT. Several have been hit with the stomach flu. So, I figured it was my turn so I worked several hours tonight. I scanned several patients as the ER at Gateway was hopping! It's best to just think of that as job security. I scanned a elderly gentleman tonight that was s/p open heart surgery. He had a low hematocrit so there was some concern of hemorrhage. However, he also was having shortness of breath and some chest pain. The radiologist said that it was pleural effusions and had no mediastinal hemmorhage.

My other big time consuming patient was actually a 2 year-old. He had a cxr and it was normal. The other technologist wanted to call the radiologist and get the new CT chest order approved. I chose to take the other route and bring the patient/mom down and get a better history. I was able to use Epic, our new electronic medical record, to my advantage and checked the physician notes. There was no history that warranted scanning this child's chest. So, I called down and spoke with the nurse who then said that the order was entered incorrectly. As a technologist, we often feel unimportant..especially from nursing. Had I just performed the exam, I would have given the child unneccesary dose. Asking clarifying questions can save the technologist unneccesary work...but more importantly we must do what is right for the patient! The key here is treating the ER physician with some respect to make everyone's lives easier!

All in all, it was a nice change in pace. I worked last week at Main Campus, but was in charge so I didn't get to scan.

Merry Christmas to everyone!