In a special series, reporter Marelle Reid has been chatting with the people who make RCH run. This is the final instalment in the series.
Mandy Rai is an ultrasound technician who has been working at Royal Columbian Hospital for almost 20 years. The Record caught up with Rai to find out what it's like in the medical imaging department.
Question: Can you describe your role?
Answer: I think we're kind of like, I don't want to say detectives, but we're looking for causes of patients' symptoms and letting the radiologists know what we find.
If we're looking at the abdomen ultrasound, we're looking at their solid organs, at the midline, the pancreas, the liver; if we're doing obstetrics work, depending on what stage of the pregnancy, we're either dating the pregnancy or we're doing a detailed scan of the baby. There's a checklist of many things we need to measure and look for and document and say whether they're normal or abnormal. If it's vascular, we're looking at the arteries and plaque and looking at the stenosis in the vessels.
Q: You originally worked as an X-ray technician before getting retrained to work as an ultrasound technician. Why the switch?
A: I still wanted to work in medical imaging but in something different. It's still diagnostic imaging, but it's just a different modality. I had to go to BCIT - at that time it was for a full year - and then went into ultrasound, and I've been doing ultrasound for about 10 years.
Q: What's the most interesting thing about your job?
A: Each case is different. Each patient is different. There's a lot of things that we know we need to do, but to try to obtain those views we have to improvise, usually, depending on the pathology and the patient's condition.
I've been doing it for 10 years, and I'm not bored yet.
I also work with a great bunch of radiologists, a great bunch of co-workers, and it's a really good environment to learn.
Q: What is the most challenging aspect of your job?
A: There is an increased (chance for) repetitive stress injury because of our job. We're scanning, we're putting pressure on, and it's repetitive because it's not the same motions, but we're scanning constantly and sometimes you have to push a bit harder. . It's not like a machine that you can just put the patient in and do the scan.
Q: How many patients do you see in a shift?
A: I think we scan about 12 to 13 patients per day in a regular shift, and then each patient is different.
Some can take 20 minutes, whereas some can take an hour depending on the pathology we're looking for and the difficulty of the case.
Q: Is there a myth you'd like to dispel about your job?
A: People think that if you've got the probe in your hand, it's just a matter of kind of waving (it around). You have to know your pathology, you have to know your anatomy. You have to know what to look for before you find something that's wrong. ...
Sure, it's a machine, but as technologists, we're using the equipment to diagnose. ... It's not as easy as some people would like to think.
Q: Is it really necessary to drink a whole litre of water before a pelvic scan?
A: No. We need a full bladder to have that window for us to see the uterus and ovaries, but most patients that drink the full litre are too full. We've adjusted our protocols. You need to be full, but you shouldn't be completely uncomfortable.
Q: What did you want to be when you were a kid?
A: I wanted to be a teacher. I actually ended up getting a scholarship to BCIT, so I had a couple of options when I applied and (the) one I thought was most interesting was medical radiography.
Q: Do you wear scrubs?
A: I don't wear scrubs. We usually wear lab coats. Some of us still wear scrubs, but I haven't worn scrubs since working in X-ray.
