Shadowing Reflection Paper

This semester our class was required to shadow 3 different imaging modalities for 5 hours each. I chose to shadow MRI, CT, and Radiation Therapy. The first place I went to shadow was at St. Patrick Hospital. I shadowed Alex in MRI. Our first patient was a women who had back muscle problems. We marked the spot on her back that she said was causing her pain and positioned her accordingly. We did a chest scan with specific breathing instructions on our next patient. We also had a patient with a very swollen foot. He didn't suffer any injuries that would cause the swelling so they sent him to MRI to see the soft tissue better. The last patient I saw was believed to have dementia because she was very forgetful so we took MRI pictures of her brain.

My second shadow was of CT at

I mainly followed Dave who was a really good teacher and person to follow. On our first patient we did a CT scan of their chest, abdomen, and pelvis with contrast to see if the patients pancreatic cancer was coming back. We did an abdomen pelvis on our second patient and found a diverticular absence, meaning the patient needed a small procedure to drain the fluid collection. I was surprised to find that the procedure to drain the fluid was also done in the CT room. Our last patient had chest pain so we did a CT scan of her chest to check her pulmonary nodules. Dave then showed me how they have the technology to build a colored 3D aorta of the patient and my mind was blown away.

My third shadow was in nuclear medicine at St. Patrick Hospital MRI

After the job shadows I decided to continue to research MRI. MRI first caught my attention during our research for our paper last semester. A lot of the articles on auntminnie.com surrounding MRI really sparked my interest. Upon further research of the field and learning that the occupation is in general safer, made me decide to write my paper on it. MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. An