# I got thru my first week of clinic without killing anyone!!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-thru-my-first-week-of-clinic-without-killing-anyone/202486>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [September 18, 2003, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-thru-my-first-week-of-clinic-without-killing-anyone/202486 "2003-09-18T22:42:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Muldoon\_s\_Squishiness](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/13edae/32.png) [@Muldoon\_s\_Squishiness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muldoon_s_Squishiness)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2003, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-thru-my-first-week-of-clinic-without-killing-anyone/202486/1 "2003-09-18T22:42:35Z")

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And a might cheer went up.  
**Yea!**

And I took my first X-rays on actual living breathing people!!

I’m a sophmore in the radiology program at the University of Charleston in West Virginia. My clinical rotation is 2 days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:00 AM until noon. Tuesday was pretty much an orientation where we got a tour of the department and other bits of the hospital. I didn’t get any sleep the night before, so I guess you could say I was just a little nervous. Then during orientation we got a whole bunch of vitally important information, none of which I can remember. 😃

Today I wasn’t as nervous as I was on Tuesday, which was good. We had to watch a video about patients privacy rights for about 40 minutes and then we went out on the floor. Our clinic instructor is really nice, always upbeat and a very good sense of humor. The other techs seem to be nice, but I’ve only been ther for 8 hours, so that will take some more time.

In my positioning class we’ve only learned chest and abdomen, so those are really the only radiographs that we could do.

By **do** I mean that we could participate in the entire procedure, but not do it by ourselves. Either a certified tech or our instructor has to be there. Which at this early stage is a good thing, 'cause on certain things I still have my head stuck 1/2 in and 1/2 out of my ass.

But as I said above, I got to do my first X-ray on a living breathing human. A man who had a kidney transplant came in to have a followup x-ray done. I only screwed up a few things, none of them overly major, and we didn’t have to take either picture over.

I also helped transport 2 patients from radiology back to their rooms. My grossout moment of the day was the man I helped transport back to his room. He had some blisters/bedsores on his ass and a number of the blisters had popped. Not barf inducing, but a reminder to me that I am going to see some truly nasty stuff while I’m doing this.