Radiology Education & Career Resources for Rad Techs

Facial Bones and Skull Positioning: Confidence for the Projections Nobody Loves

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In our group’s positioning-dread poll, right behind feet came a telling answer: “anything related to the head.” Facial bones and skull positioning rattle even competent techs, and the reason is simple — you don’t do them often enough to stay loose, and every projection depends on baselines you have to consciously rebuild each time. Confidence …

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Foot-in-the-Door Jobs: What Techs Did Before They Were Techs

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When a member of our group asked who completed rad tech school while working, the thread quietly became something better: a catalog of foot-in-the-door jobs. Patient transporter. Student CT assistant. Ward clerk on a med/surg unit — reading the rad reports on patients he’d filmed and calling techs for stat portables. Nurse’s aide. Pharmacy tech. …

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The Exams That Stay With You: A Tech’s Guide to the Hard Days

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Ask techs which exams they dread and most answers are banter — feet, scapula Y, portables. But in our group’s thread, one answer landed differently: “Trauma or dead baby would be my answer.” Every working tech knows exactly what that comment means. The exams that stay with you aren’t the technically hard ones — they’re …

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Foot and Toe X-Ray Positioning: Surviving the Exams Everyone Dreads

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We polled our group on which body part techs secretly dread positioning, and feet ran away with it — “all those obliques,” toes that need taping while the patient makes a big stink, and the cases nobody puts on a brochure: diabetic feet, osteomyelitis, fragile skin, and worse. Foot and toe x-ray positioning is genuinely …

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Cross-Table Lateral Hip Without a Partner: Technique for the Real World

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Asked which exam they dread on a busy shift, one tech in our group didn’t hesitate: a cross-table lateral hip on a bariatric patient, with a portable, and no partner. That answer got knowing reactions, because the cross-table lateral hip is the exam where textbook conditions and real conditions are furthest apart. Here’s the technique …

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When a Cardiac Cath Lab Does General IR: Where the Room Fights You

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An IR tech in our group asked a question that deserves more attention than it got: does your team avoid certain procedures — Coolief was her example — in a cardiac cath lab room, because of the machine’s limitations? Her room runs a GE IGS Pulse, and her follow-up was even more useful than the …

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Imaging Kids Without the Meltdown: Techniques That Save the Exam (and Your Schedule)

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Pediatric imaging has a reputation problem. “Those exams take FOREVER — no matter how simple,” as one tech put it in our group this week, and every department has a version of that sigh. But here’s the reframe that changes everything: the meltdown isn’t a personality flaw in the kid. Pediatric imaging goes long when …

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Taking a Vented ICU Patient to CT: What the Trip Really Involves

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Few orders make a tech’s stomach drop like taking a vented ICU patient to CT. One tech in our group put it bluntly this week: getting pulled to bring an intubated patient down for a calcium-score CT felt absurd — and judging by the reactions, half the group has lived that exact shift. So let’s …

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When Management Won’t Back You Up: Escalating the Right Way as a Rad Tech

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“How do you deal with management that is spineless?” A tech dropped that question in our group’s Ask-a-Tech thread this week, and it deserves more than a comment-length answer. When management won’t back you up, you have more leverage than it feels like — if you escalate like a professional instead of venting like a …

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How Physically Demanding Is Rad Tech Work, Really? An Honest Breakdown

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How physically demanding is rad tech work, really? A new grad weighing radiography against physical therapy asked our group exactly that — she wanted raw, brutal truths about the feet, the lifting, and the day-to-day toll before committing to a program. The veterans obliged. Here’s the honest breakdown, with the nuance the brochures leave out. …

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