Bad Clinical Experiences

For the most part, the clinical experience during school can be somewhat stressful, and definitely uncomfortable, but occasionally we run into a particular person who simply makes your life difficult. They might not purposefully mean for this to happen, but for one reason or another, you clash. I'm sure we've all had those particular Instructors or Technologists in our lives and in our education, but for some reason, we rarely speak about those individuals. Let me introduce you to the elephant in the room.

When I was in school, there was one staff Technologist in particular who made my clinical experience very difficult. Public humiliation and threats of being thrown out of the clinical site happened all too often.

I remember performing a cross-table lumbar spine for localization as a student (on film/screen). I hung up my image to place a date sticker on it and write "portable" with my sharpie. The images was slightly underexposed, but there was enough density and visualization of the anatomy to clearly make out the vertebral bodies and visualize trabeculae, as well as the spinal needle that the Surgeon wanted the Radiologist to confirm that he was cutting at the correct level.

This Technologist (with about 5 other Technologists standing in the room looking at my image) saw my image on the light box and said, "Oh my God... What the hell do we pay you for? That's unacceptable!" This was toward the end of my clinical experience, so I had gradually built up enough bravery (and stupidity) to compose my response, which I don't recommend using... I replied in a calm, collected tone, "you don't pay me." I think I actually saw steam coming out of her ears... if I only had an egg to crack on her head, I'm sure it would have cooked instantly. Infuriated, she yelled, "Go repeat that right now!"

The tech I was assigned to walked me out of the room and led me straight into the reading room. He told me he thought that I didn't really need to repeat it, but we would ask the Radiologist just in case. When the Radiologist said it wasn't necessary, he also suggested I alter my technique for the rest of the procedure once the hardware was inserted.

I thought I was through the woods until about an hour later, when I found out that she had followed up to see if I repeated the image, and began ridiculing me in front of her staff again. I don't remember her exact words, but she mentioned the word "insubordination" and "do that again and you're out of here." She knew very well that we showed the image to the Radiologist as well, and I found myself on transport duty for the next two weeks.

She liked to do this to me because the hospital was always short on transporters, and she knew I transported for a different hospital on the weekends. I was a victim of my own initiative because I was usually done with my competency evaluations for the semester early, so the school couldn't necessarily say my education was being hindered, although I still disagree. I should also mention that the dress code for male Radiography Students was slacks, dress shoes, long-sleeved shirt, tie and lab coat, so it meant two straight weeks of dripping sweat in my nice clothes and lots of laundry. For some reason, the female students were allowed to wear scrubs... never understood that.

This was just one event from one day of almost two years worth of dread. If you don't know me, I usually find it easy to get along with most people, so it goes to show that no matter what kind of personality you have, you are going to encounter someone like this in your career eventually that just seems to have it out for you. I hear of other stories similar to mine that seem to make people question whether or not they could handle their clinical rotation, as it did for me. I only got through it by constant evaluation of my progress... this person, whether she had a grudge against me, men in general, or was just really unhappy, managed to motivate me to make as few mistakes as possible. I paid attention to detail and tried to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible so that I could attend a day while flying under her radar.

I questioned whether or not to write this post because I did have plenty of good experiences during my clinical rotation, and I don't want to sound negative. There is something therapeutic when you know that others have experienced what you're going through, and have persevered through the thick of it, but it was not until many years after these experiences that I have found anyone willing to open up about it.

I would love to hear similar experiences from anyone willing to post, and please DO NOT mention names - the last thing I want to do here is call anyone out directly, so I also recommend posting anonymously. I would also be interested in hearing how you think the person in your experiences could have handled themselves differently that would have created a more valuable learning experience. No matter how much experience we all build, we still have things to learn too.

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