Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Shaping Up To Be A Bad Week

On Monday I got a written warning for failing to do my job, and having to reschedule a patient for waiting too long.

On Tuesday, the last patient of the day the MRI scanner kept blowing an RF amp. Of course, this morning it is working.


A little back story on Monday. On Friday, I had to recall a patient to do some more scans due to poor image quality. Of which, I had only done this particular scan once before, and frankly, some of the diagnosis from the images on the scans are magical. I mean, I look at the report and wonder "how on Earth did the radiologist see that"?

I call the patient and she can make it back into our clinic before leaving town. I'm thinking [which is my first mistake] that I can run them in and out of the scanner in about 15-20 minutes. Well, the scans still come out grainy, and I have to pull over the Philips protocols which are 6 minutes long. I also have to call the radiologist to confirm that the images are of diagnostic quality. Of course, the radiologist wants to add just one more sequence [another 6 minutes].

At this time, it has been close to 35-40 minutes since the other scheduled patient's time which is a double scan. In retrospect, I should have run the double scan and had the rescan wait [second mistake]. I get the scheduled patient back into the dressing room, and she's not happy. Of course, during the continued scanning process the other patient waiting in the wings gets fed up and let's me have it with a carefully worded verbal dissertation. Turns out she's a doctor...

The doctor calls my boss, and so it travels downhill until it hits me squarely in the chest.

Lessons Learned:

Call the radilogist if I have any doubt about scan quality.
Doctors are special people that require special care and ego boosts.
Don't think about squeezing a person in front of a scheduled patient.
Keep my resume updated & get my national certification for MRI modality.

But really, isn't this is what preparedness is all about: preparing, practicing, and refining? Mine just happens to be my work life this time.


Keep Right On Prepping - K

No comments:

Post a Comment