A & E

Clinical placement has been pretty cool. It's quite different to learning in class. I made a mistake of going to Westmead Children's Hospital rather than Westmead, but luckily I turned up early so by the time I realised my mistake, I was still on time.

Let me say this first though. The digital radiography system is fucking sexy. Two systems operate at Westmead, the CR (Computed Radiography) and DR. The CR system works like this. You slide in a cassette, set your exposure factors, ping then take out the cassette and slot into a reader, so you can see whether you've done a correct diagnostic image. And if you get it wrong, you have to do it all over again. This is not counting the multiple cassettes. The DR system has an image receptor, so the X-rays are stored digitally and displayed instantly on the screen, you if you do get something wrong, you can quickly do another shot. Everything is automated so you don't have to punch in the factors. Sexy, very sexy.

The people at the hospital are nice, but are always in a rush. My current supervisor is definitely a pro, I mean, she knows her shit, so to speak. She is a bit pedantic on technique, but it's the right technique. I managed to do a handful of chest x-rays today. Besides assisting in procedures or observing them, I also do some reading and take care to the request forms. When a request is entered, the printer in the room churns out the form (what to x-ray, patient details etc) and some stickers. I take the form, label the location of the patient, stick the stickers on and place in queue, with the newest ones at the back. We seem to always have a backlog of requests to do. I only ever see about two radiographers, including my supervisor on duty, at most three. Today, there was more reading and organising request forms than taking x-rays, because my supervisor was running around doing mobile chest x-rays (when the patient is too sick to come to us, we go to them), and the other person on duty was a PDY that didn't really like me observing. But I learnt stuff and that's what important.

I'd probably do more x-rays tomorrow, since I start at 8am and the mornings are usually slow, so I can take my time, and my supervisor can point out some details better.

The weather has been horrible. It's stopped raining, so far, but the wind is blowing pretty strong and it's cold as well. I timed my purchase of a trenchcoat perfectly. It's so warm.

Sophia's planning her 18th birthday and the theme is Heroes and Villains. I have know idea what to go as, but preliminary ideas are mad scientist (I already have a labcoat) or 1940s gangster ( i just need a hat, and maybe a mustache and maybe a gun?). Meh. I still have time to plan.

Off I go, to revise radiographic postionings.