All right. Today we are discussing the topic that is near and dear to my heart, and that is questions. This one is especially dedicated to all of the students and new techs that come to fall under the same guidelines. I’m talking about you guys holding the best title to put you in the prime opportunity to ask as many questions as you would like throughout the entire.
Event of your clinical time. I’m talking about because techs that work with students and new techs are expecting the new techs to ask questions about the hospital they’re working at, how they do things, cross training, all those different things like that. And then the students. This is your opportunity wide open.
You can ask questions about anything and everything. I’m talking, asking questions on helping, positioning questions you have on what’s going on in school. I’m talking questions about other modalities such as CT, DEXA, Nuc Med, MRI, anything and everything. I am talking about if you have a hard time with something, always clip your bottom of your chest X-rays.
Ask the text you work with in clinical. Say, Hey, what’s going on with this? Hey, can you show me what you do? What’s your trick? These are all your chance to do this. This is also your chance to say, Hey, I wanna learn how to start an iv. Can I watch you do that? Can you show me how to load the injector? Can you show me how to do a recon on things?
Soak up all of that knowledge because this is your time to do that. And I think what makes it uniquely special that. Us in the medical field, as well as some other medical field options typically have clinicals. This gives you prime opportunity to ask questions about the field you’re entering. Ask the techs you’re working with at clinical site, why do you work here?
What did you look for? Do you take call? Do you work nights? Do you work holidays? How does that work? Is your PTOA set number of checks off a day or is it seniority? All of these different things can help give you ideas to maybe where you wanna be when you’re done with school. Maybe you talk to a tech that says, I pass out at the site of blood with starting IVs, so I work in a clinic. Great spot for you. Another tech could tell you I switched from a job of taking call because you have to live within 10 minutes of the hospital. Oh, okay. Maybe you didn’t know that. That’s your opportunity to understand and learn that. It’s also your opportunity to understand and learn how to be the best patient advocates we can be.
I’m talking about following that tech. If they have a question about an order in the ER and you see that tech go, oh, I’m gonna go ask CER provider about this, or, oh, I’m gonna go run it by the nurses, you follow them. You follow and tag along and be their shadow. Because you will start to hear and pick up and understand. How you can talk to everyone else in the hospital with respect as well. Not saying, um, it’s a totem pole or kind of who, but everyone holds respect for every area they do. Like we do not draw blood and we are not doctors, we are not nurses. We are not housekeeping, we are not, uh, facilities. We do our own thing.
But it is important to. Be able to understand how to respectfully ask questions or to let them know something needs to be changed, and to kind of see how that plays out. Like that is your opportunity to do that. Take it up. Don’t, don’t miss out on it. Ask as many questions. Techs love helping. You will find techs at clinical sites.
Some techs like myself who would talk your ear off all day that you ask them a question, they will help you. They will bring it up again. They will make sure you got it because that’s all they want is for you to be successful. And not even looking at it from a just solely student standpoint, looking at it from a new tech standpoint, this is your opportunity to learn and digest what is expected of you at this new job.
And so if you fail to pay attention, if you fail to ask a question about a procedure, a policy, a plan, something that way. And then it comes up to you say three, four months down the road, when you no longer are considered the new tech on the block and you’re stumped, you’re really gonna be kicking yourself.
No one ever is mad about questions, but they are mad about questions. If it’s something you should have asked, day one, day two, month one, month two, not. Year three, four down the road. That’s kind of an extreme example, but it’s true. They do just want you to learn and succeed and be successful because that makes the overall department very successful.
And I know that is a lot and it sounds crazy, but I just, I’m telling people like, please understand. The techs want questions. They want students that are gonna chat with them and seem engaged and wanting to be there and partake in the other aspects of the department, not just taking x-rays and going and sitting at home.
So that’s what they’re there for. I think about my time in clinical and we had downtime and we would go purge films. So get rid of films that are outdated that no longer need to be kept for records and like, that seems so boring to me at the time. But it also gave me the opportunity to be with a technologist at my clinical site and ask questions about different x-rays.
We were actually looking at this too, to see how you would position it or what was good about it. Yeah, just be there for them and ask questions. If they aren’t, to kind of help encourage them. Otherwise, just allow them to ask questions. Be receptive. Don’t shy away and say, I don’t know the answer. If you aren’t sure, say, let’s go look it up. Be open to share about that stuff. It’s very important. And as well as asking all of the questions, it’s important to just overall be understanding that questions will come up. Not everyone will have the answers, but it’s also important just to be able to learn and to continue to grow within the field.