At the beginning of my internship I made goals that I hoped to achieve by then end of my 200-hour internship. These goals were to build my team-work skills, show my responsibility and dependability, and build up my communication skills. I would build up my team-work skills by helping the techs in order to make the jobs go smoothly. In order to show my responsibility and dependability, I would be showing up if they call me in for emergencies at night. The way I would build up my communication skills, is by learning how to talk to the patients in a comforting way. In my internship I achieved these goals by learning everything that was expected of me and then took that knowledge and applied it to when working with the techs, so they didn’t have to keep telling me what to do. I also achieved my goals of being dependable and gaining communication skills by increasing the volume on my phone, having things laid out at night in case I was called out, and talking to patients in a soft voice while greeting them so that they knew we were interested in taking care of them. As my year goes on I hope to keep building on these accomplishments by using them in the organizations I am involved with.
During my internship I got to experience a wide variety of assignments. At the beginning I learned a lot about what each scanning device did and how to work them. There is a lot of technology that goes into how to work each scanning device properly as well. My supervisor taught me how to warm up the CT machine so that its properly ready in case we have a patient order. As time went on I got to help my supervisor prep patients for the IV if they had to have a CT scan with contrast which can also be taken orally if the patient is allergic to iodine. It was really good for me to help him with IV’s because I always would get to the point where I would almost pass out when seeing needles and blood and now that I have seen it more I don’t really react to it anymore. More towards the end I learned how to work the different programs to help send documents and results to the radiologist as well as scanning the documents into the system and burning CD’s for the patients request or doctor’s request. This helped the techs a lot so that they we can all get paperwork done faster. Overall when doing this internship, I learned that when emergencies happen its best to stay out of the way and know your place, but if they do ask you for help, you do whatever they ask at the best of your ability and at the end of the day we don’t bash on other’s mistakes. We learn from each other’s mistakes. It was such a blast learning with all of the x-ray techs and other employees at our hospital. I was glad to have this opportunity that Ogallala Commons provided me with because I feel like it has definitely shown me some of the up’s and downs of this career field, but it has also given me a head start to my future ahead. With everything that I have learned about radiology, I am able to confidently say that I do want to pursue my dream of becoming a radiologist, so thank you Ogallala Commons, Southeast Colorado Hospital and employees. Maybe someday you will all see me back at the hospital too help our little loving community!
