The comprehensive final in my positioning class proved to be much easier than I thought. Admittedly, I sometimes have a tendency to only learn things for tests, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the information came rushing back to me when I read the test questions. Our instructor e-mailed our grades to us this afternoon, and I scored a 95% on the final exam and a 97% in the class. I am extremely happy with both scores and hope to find out my grade in RAD 101 tomorrow. The first quarter is OFFICIALLY over, and I'm looking forward to Fall Break (a week) to catch up on some mindless house work and spending some quality time with my husband.
After class yesterday, a fellow student and I drove to our clinical site to introduce ourselves to our clinical instructor. The drive (in late morning) wasn't too bad, and the facility is located in a very nice area. The room where the techs congregate and wait for orders is HUGE - much bigger than any of the rooms at the hospital where I work - and the facility is really nice. They have CR but no PACS system (yet), so we'll be responsible for printing hard copy films of each x-ray and making sure that they are delivered to the radiologists in the reading room. The clinical instructor has a heavy accent that makes him a little difficult to understand and made the point right off to let us know that he is "notorious" at our school for being "the mean one." He also gave us one expectation: "I will show you how to do an exam one time. Feel free to ask as many questions as you need. After that, I expect you to be able to perform the exam on your own. That's how I learned." YIKES! He certainly made me very nervous, but the more I think about it, I wonder if that was his intent. Maybe it's his way of seeing what we're made of - either we will rise to the occasion or crack under pressure. Maybe he was just messing with us. He seems like a very nice guy with very high expectations. Either way, I want to make certain that I am up on everything, so I think I'll take part of Fall Break to start reading ahead in my positioning books. That way, at least I'll be somewhat familiar if he throws an exam at me that we haven't covered yet in class. Needless to say, I'm a little more nervous about starting clinical than I thought I might be - partly because of my meeting with the clinical instructor; partly because of all the paperwork we have to turn in on a weekly/biweekly basis; and partly because I am overwhelmed by the comps we are required to complete during clinical. For the Fall quarter, we have seven mandatory comps but three "optional" comps that will be carried over if we don't get them in this quarter. There are only 10 weeks in a quarter, so you do the math. :)
In the meantime, as I pointed out in my very first post, I am a TV junkie. :) Lucky for me (and others like me), my Fall Break happens to coincide with Premiere Week!!! I couldn't be happier about the timing and can't wait for Grey's Anatomy and ER to return as well as the new show Private Practice. Because I'm trying to keep this blog mostly about my experiences in school, I will *try* to keep my commentary about my favorite shows off this forum, but I'm not promising anything. :)
I recently heard a quote that I LOVE and think it applies to anyone going back to school: "I never said it would be easy; I said it would be worth it." Another one of my favorites: "If it were easy, everyone would do it."
Have a great couple of weeks!
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Organized Chaos
This morning's post is coming to you a full two hours earlier than my normal wake up time for a "school day," largely in part that I have one more test in positioning class today (shoulder girdle) and our comprehensive final on Wednesday. Needless to say, I have been studying - A LOT - this weekend and wanted to get a little more time in this morning before class. On a side note, I want to point out that as I get older, I am falling in love with early mornings, and I NEVER thought I would say that. There is something very cathartic about being awake when the rest of the world is still sleeping. Early mornings are turning into MY time - just me, my coffee and my cat. :)
We had our final in RAD 101 last Wednesday, and while I don't know the official results yet, I feel really good about it. It was a comprehensive final which I had been a bit worried about just because there was SO MUCH information thrown at us this quarter, but it actually turned out to be easier than I thought. (Knock on wood because I'm so superstitious!) I most certainly pulled off an A in 101 and am on a good course to pull an A in my positioning class, so I'm glad to keep my 4.0 rolling!
Work is going very well. The hospital I work at has three separate imaging units - one for inpatients, one for ER patients and one for outpatients. 99.5% of my time is spent transporting inpatients, so when the opportunity to work in the ER for a day came up, I jumped all over it. :) In the ER, the "transport pit" (where transporters wait for orders) is actually in the same room with the rad techs and digital radiography (DR) monitors. Because the techs all know that I'm an x-ray student, they let me observe their cases then went over the images with me to point out anatomy, fractures, dislocations, abnormalities and what they could've done to get a better shot. It was AWESOME. I got to see a wide array of shoulder dislocations (which helped out a lot considering that's what we're studying in positioning class), fractures and spine work. They also performed quite a few CXRs and abdominal x-rays, but I see a lot of those on the inpatient side as well. Our energized lab at school uses computerized radiography (CR) technology, which I thought was amazing, but DR is INCREDIBLE. There's no cassette - you get the shot and it immediately pops up on the DR monitor making it extremely interesting for nosy student bystanders (hi!) and efficient for the tech who doesn't have to take time to remove the cassette from the bucky, load it in to the reader, wait for it to load then decipher whether or not to reshoot. A-MAZ-ING. Technology rocks!
I've written before about the "buzz" I feel around the hospital on any given day...the ER is an energizing place with people all over the place. The best term I can come up with in describing it is "organized chaos." I certainly enjoyed my day there and am eager for a clinical rotation at one of the major trauma centers in our area. I never thought I would be an ER nut, but I can definitely see myself thriving in that area.
Have a great week!
We had our final in RAD 101 last Wednesday, and while I don't know the official results yet, I feel really good about it. It was a comprehensive final which I had been a bit worried about just because there was SO MUCH information thrown at us this quarter, but it actually turned out to be easier than I thought. (Knock on wood because I'm so superstitious!) I most certainly pulled off an A in 101 and am on a good course to pull an A in my positioning class, so I'm glad to keep my 4.0 rolling!
Work is going very well. The hospital I work at has three separate imaging units - one for inpatients, one for ER patients and one for outpatients. 99.5% of my time is spent transporting inpatients, so when the opportunity to work in the ER for a day came up, I jumped all over it. :) In the ER, the "transport pit" (where transporters wait for orders) is actually in the same room with the rad techs and digital radiography (DR) monitors. Because the techs all know that I'm an x-ray student, they let me observe their cases then went over the images with me to point out anatomy, fractures, dislocations, abnormalities and what they could've done to get a better shot. It was AWESOME. I got to see a wide array of shoulder dislocations (which helped out a lot considering that's what we're studying in positioning class), fractures and spine work. They also performed quite a few CXRs and abdominal x-rays, but I see a lot of those on the inpatient side as well. Our energized lab at school uses computerized radiography (CR) technology, which I thought was amazing, but DR is INCREDIBLE. There's no cassette - you get the shot and it immediately pops up on the DR monitor making it extremely interesting for nosy student bystanders (hi!) and efficient for the tech who doesn't have to take time to remove the cassette from the bucky, load it in to the reader, wait for it to load then decipher whether or not to reshoot. A-MAZ-ING. Technology rocks!
I've written before about the "buzz" I feel around the hospital on any given day...the ER is an energizing place with people all over the place. The best term I can come up with in describing it is "organized chaos." I certainly enjoyed my day there and am eager for a clinical rotation at one of the major trauma centers in our area. I never thought I would be an ER nut, but I can definitely see myself thriving in that area.
Have a great week!
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