The International Day of Radiology is a yearly event celebrated every November 8th, the anniversary of the discovery of x-rays, and promotes radiology’s role in healthcare.
The European Society of Radiology (E.S.R.), the Radiological Society of North America, and the American College of Radiology (A.C.R.) jointly launched it in 2012. Nearly 200 national sub-specialty and allied organizations around the world recognize and celebrate the International Day of Radiology.
Every year, a theme is chosen that focuses on various radiology specialties. To commemorate this day, we have taken a day in the life of a radiologist, a radiotherapy patient, and a radiographer from the E.S.R. website. Enjoy the reading!
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A RADIOLOGIST
Call me Giovanni – A few minutes ago – never mind how long precisely – my alarm clock rang. It is about 6:30am and I have to go to work. I live downtown, not too far from the hospital. I am a radiologist working at the Emergency Department and I have to be there at 8 o’clock to start my morning shift. Today, I will have to take care of all patients sent for a computed tomography (CT) scan, another colleague will deal with plain film x-rays, and we will have to share the workload in ultrasound (US).
Emergency radiology is a job I like: you have to deal with acute (suddenly arising) cases, you can, hopefully, provide a great contribution to solving their problems and you feel you are important for these patients. Furthermore, all radiologists in the emergency department have been able to create a good feeling with our colleagues specialising in other areas of medicine. Emergency physicians respect our opinion and rely, maybe too much, on our diagnostic skills.
It is stressful (too many patients, always in a hurry), but it is a satisfying profession. As always, traffic jams are a problem in the morning, but I have been able to arrive on time. There are already four patients on the list today. They arrived at the hospital during the night and were not emergencies, so they were able to wait until my arrival. Taking a look at the request forms, there is a patient with a bad fracture of the knee; the orthopaedic surgeon requests a CT examination to plan his operation.
One is an old lady with a very swollen abdomen due to a suspected intestinal obstruction. Another patient has renal colic (abdominal pain originating from the kidneys) and is obese. The last patient is a 17-year-old girl with suspected acute appendicitis; I will first do an ultrasound examination on this patient and then decide whether to proceed with a CT scan or not. There are no neurological cases (patients with a problem relating to the nervous system) for me, since in my hospital neuroradiologists have their own patients; their CT area is just 50 metres from here. Let’s start. I call the technician and the nurse and ask them to let the first patient come in. My reading space – the area where I study the images resulting from the examination – is just behind the control room of the CT scanner. I work quite closely together with the technician who operates the equipment and the nurse who takes care of the patient.
I know there are different ways of working, but I like this continuous contact with my co-workers: we are a team. I make a quick check of the patient’s chart and decide on the scanning technique. Some patients require an injection of a substance called ‘contrast medium’, which helps to make certain things more clearly visible in the image, but this isn’t necessary for my first patient. I will have to prepare some ’nice’ 3D images for the....READ MORE
The International Day of Radiology is a yearly event celebrated every November 8th, the anniversary of the discovery of x-rays, and promotes radiology’s role in healthcar...
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