Galvatron1

Ha ha ha!! ur funny! Thnx 4 brightening my day...approx. 50% of my pts speak Chinese, & 50% speak Spanish. While I learned enuf spanish to speak it well enuf, its not my 1st language & takes a lot of effort to understand & speak it, & to juggle that obstacle w/ my other regular duties can be overwhelming at times...

It's bad enuf we only hav 1 x-ray room in the whole hospital, but 90% of the pts are non-english speaking, try explaining when body language doesnt workk, frustrating indeed! I had been x-raying a pt for a half an hour(pt had 3 page exam & couldn't speak english). On top of that, we are horribly short staffed and I was the only x-ray tech, running the whole radiology dept by myself from start to finish, including accessioning the pts. As I am performing the exam, a pt knocks on the door, interupting me & the pt. in the room, to ask how long it will be. My blood started to boil, how incredibly rude & inconsiderate! Here I am, running the whole Radiology Dept. by myself, trying to do everything as quickly as possible, w/ this stupid distraction!! When I got her in the room, I told her, "this is not Burger King, you can't have it your way! This is a hospital, you should expect to wait."

Wow! The pay rate vs housing sounds excellent in WI!! I live in NYC, my hourly rate is 24.53 as an x-ray tech, but avg house in Brooklyn is 600,000 or more. To live in Manhattan, I'd have to work 3 jobs and not eat or buy anything ever...How much do x-ray techs start off with in WI? I noticed that salary chart is a bit dated(2004), is there a more current one?

It is. Am I the only one who sees drinking 2 or more liters of soda a day as an addiction? I believe soda to be one of the main culprits of diabetes & cancer in our society. I never could understand health care professionals choosing unhealthy lifestyles for themselves(ie-smoking, drinking etc.) yet commit their lives to saving lives of others.

I used to drink nothing but soda as a kid growing up w/o drinking any water. Then I found out I had the kidney disorder IgA Nephropathy after a renal biopsy, b/c I got elbowed in the back and was pissing blood after a basketball game. My aunt told me to drink only water, and stop drinking soda. I only drink soda occasionally now, and mostly drink water. This was very difficult in the beginning, but now I actually prefer drinking only water. I see a lot of stubborn soda drinkers in here. Anyone heard of a book called "Natural Cures to Diseases they don't want you to know about?" Watch the infomercial on tv, it talks about the addictive additives they put in all kinds of food. I remember getting a strong craving after buy the Simpson's Ritz Bitz Smores. The addictive food additive was so strong I could not stop myself from buying more of the product, & I tried mentally resisting the temptations. p.s.- Doesn't it suck that institutions insist on using means which cause cancer, to try and rid you of it?

will this mean higher taxes? will we have to pay for it somehow? pls discuss, i want your thoughts on the following 1199 petition: in late june, more than 2,000 healthcare workers met in baltimore to launch seiu healthcare, our new national union with more than 1 million healthcare members from 38 seiu locals, speaking with one strong voice for good jobs and quality care. » read more about the launch of seiu healthcare seiu healthcare will work to unite more healthcare workers, raise standards, and fix america's broken healthcare system. our first big effort is to collect a million petition signatures urging congress to provide health insurance to uninsured children. more than 9 million children in america have no health insurance. they have no access to regular checkups, their parents struggle to afford doctors' visits when they are sick, and they often go without care. congress can provide coverage to millions of uninsured kids by increasing funding for the state children's health insurance program (schip) by $50 billion. sign the petition and help america's children get the care they need. be one in a million. visit the web address below to tell your friends about this. tell-a-friend! if you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for seiu action center.

Hear about the study about the ill-effects reported in the news, even if it's diet?

not while I was on probation, but now that I'm not...maybe![EVIL][/EVIL]

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner:), I don't know why my yahoo email account is not alerting me to new responses on allnurses.com, even though I subscribed to this thread. I've been sick with strepp throat & bronchitis, so I haven't even begun to apply for work yet, but all my classmates already have jobs that graduated with me in June '06. Also, another reason I haven't applied yet, is because I have to renew my personal training license in 3 months:pumpiron: , well actually take it all over, because the org that orig certified me stop doing personal training certification, they just sell gym equipment now!:chuckle To wanna-be-nurse: I live in Brooklyn, across the street from Brooklyn College! To wdwpixie: Your 100% right about the differing relationships w/ pts, & in a sense we kinda r like photographers of the insides, it's an art!:wink2:

The job market is excellent , all my classmates :mortarboard: got jobs that were looking for work. There is opportunity to go on to MRI or CT, after a year of experience and sitting for an exam. I think it bumps salary up to in the 60s K:smiley_aa. There is no cap I know of, from what I heard, you get paid in levels, via years of experience. You can also go on to teach or take on supervisory roles, like being supv. of the Radiology Dept:monkeydance:.

Yes, you definitely earn your paychecks, you are angels in scrubs!! I have nothing but respect for nurses!!

In NYC the pay rate is about $24-$27 an hour for X-Ray Techs. The program is not as hard as nursing, we have less responsibility than nurses, don't have to worry about whether our decisions will kill a patient or not, but we have our work cut out for us. Portables and BE Exams are the less glamorous side of our profession:chair:, but we do it cuz we love helping ppl! :icon_hug:

I'm glad this topic has gotten a lot of you stirred up, that's awesome that we got such a wide spectrum of viewpoints on this topic! I never new that some of you guys and gals don't have locker rooms to change, like we do here in NYC, that poses an interesting problem. However, I am a little concerned that some of you would only change if the issue was whether the hospital brought your scrubs or whether you had to buy them. This is not an issue about the money, it's about doing the right thing and thinking about exposing innocent children, elderly, immunosuppressed, etc. ppl of the public, to the germs we face daily in our respective hospitals or doctor's office. Let's face it, there are a lot more diseases we are exposed to in our profession, than that are out there in the general public areas...if ppl weren't ill or afflicted, they wouldn't need our care or be in a hospital to get our scrubs dirty!! LoLz!!

New York Daily News Tuesday Oct. 17th 2006 -Barbara M. Simpson writes: "MEDICAL WORKERS NEED TO CHANGE I have bben wondering if there is now a rule that persons who work in the medical field, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. can wear their uniforms in the streets, on the buses and on the trains. Aren't they required to wear regular clothes to work and then change to their uniforms and change back after they have completed their tour of duty? Every day you see white uniforms, blue uniforms [scrubs] in the post office, in the stores, in the banks, in restaurants, on the streets. That kind of behavior is unsanitary." I happen to agree, what do you guys think? I admit, I've been guilty of this as a student, after following the lead of my health care profession colleagues. But I realize I was wrong in doing so, & I'm willing to change. I always see scrubs on the trains, and we were taught in school to change once we get to the hospital & when we leave. Why do many of us do it? I believe we can do better as health care professionals.