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The ASRT is working to identify workplace issues to ensure the
profession doesn’t lose technologists due to poor job satisfaction
‘At my hospital, we had a nurse who became a technologist because she felt overworked, and now she’s doing twice as much.’–Heather Gabriel, RT(R)
By Eric Fiedler
It’s a confusing conundrum: As job responsibilities and knowledge requirements for imaging professionals increase, many RTs feel the respect they receive from RNs and other health care professionals is not growing along with them. In particular, some X-ray technologists feel that they are being neglected when it comes to fair compensation and basic professional respect.
"When did we become the dogs of the hospital?" asked Dolores Holleman, RT(R), of Port Orange, Fla.
Holleman illustrated her opinion with a description of a typical scene at her hospital:
"A request comes off the printer for a flat and upright abdomen on a patient. I search the file room for the jacket, pull the previous films, sticker the jacket, write out the wet reading slip, and now it’s time to get the patient. I take a stretcher up to the room and wait 20 minutes for a nurse to disconnect the I.V., and then I move the patient onto the stretcher and transport the patient to radiology. I obtain the necessary views on this difficult patient, process my own films, and manage to obtain optimum radiographs.
"I then transport the patient back upstairs and put the patient back to bed while the nurses sit at the nurses’ station. I go back to radiology, where I have to pull the films off the scope and hang the new ones for the radiologist, making sure the previous films and reports are in order. Did I mention that while the patient was on the table I was interrupted five times by the telephone, outpatients at the window, and doctors looking for films and reports? While transporting, the nurse asked how long it would take to get a wet reading and then told me to bring the films up to the floor as soon as possible for the doctor to review them. Then later tonight, I get to file the reports in the jacket!"
Because of the constant commotion, Holleman believes, she’s had to compromise patient care while doing the jobs of four other people. "I’m a darkroom tech, a secretary, a file room clerk and a transporter," she said.
Holleman said computed tomography (CT) technologists can threaten to quit and get a raise and/or a new two million dollar scanner. Meanwhile, "we diagnostic techs are told to be thankful we have a job while we produce quality films on equipment that is nearly 50 years old!" she said. "Even the on-call techs come in and treat us like private secretaries, asking where their paperwork is and if we can help them transport.
"My boss calls it teamwork," Holleman said, "but where is the team when I need help?"
Holleman is not the only technologist who feels the workplace environment is too rough on RTs. Heather Gabriel, RT(R), of West Caldwell, N.J., believes the reason so many of her peers are burning out begins with the misperception that all an RT does in the hospital is press buttons and take pictures.
"We need to educate people about what it is we do," she said. "At my hospital, we had a nurse who became a technologist because she felt overworked, and now she’s doing twice as much."
Gabriel does not believe there is a feud brewing between RTs and nurses, but said there are some inconsistencies. "When you compare their pay scale to ours in relation to what our job responsibilities have become, I think we get the short end of the stick," she said.
Some of the blame rests in health care reform, Holleman said. "I think health care reform means less patient care and more burnout for techs," she said. "We need to cut back on hospital administrators, put the ancillary people back to work, and let the techs concentrate on patient care and producing quality radiographs."
Evaluating Working Conditions
Valid concerns or the idle griping of technologists with nothing better to do than complain? The American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT) aims to find out.
Hearing the cries of discontented technologists, the ASRT Education and Research Foundation is funding an environmental scan to gain a broader understanding of the radiology workplace as perceived by technologists, managers and administrators.
Michael DelVecchio, BS, RT(R), and the ASRT’s board chairman, believes it is a major responsibility of his organization to identify sources of discontent for RTs and create an action plan. "We’ve been seeing the same types of concerns for the past 20-30 years," he said. "The difference now is that we have the resources and the ability to do something about it."
DelVecchio understands that most RTs are not simply seeking salary increases. "They want recognition and rewards that aren’t just monetary," he said. "How can we help to make people in this profession happier with their personal and professional lives?"
While DelVecchio believes it has come a long way, the profession as a whole is still in its infancy in terms of potential. "I think that we are just now beginning to identify where the problems are, and from there we are gaining an idea of how to make some changes."
"The environment in general has become poor in a lot of respects," he said, naming health care reform laws and hospital administration indifference among the key complaints he has heard. "We can do all the recruitment in the world and upgrade education standards, but if the environment doesn’t change, people are going to leave anyway."
The environmental scan being undertaken by the ASRT, DelVecchio said, "is to see what kinds of practices work and don’t work, and what’s going to make them happy. We should look at that on a continual basis."
DelVecchio said it is important to improve working conditions for RTs not just so they feel more respected, but also for the good of patients. "The kinds of changes we will make will also help create a more productive environment for technologists," he said.
Sal Martino, EdD, Foundation chief operating officer, is managing the research and has commissioned Savitz Research Solutions to administer the project, tabulate the data and create the report.
The environmental scan will use surveys and interviews to identify factors and attributes that drive job satisfaction as well as career satisfaction. "By specifically identifying the needs of the radiology community as it navigates this rapidly changing work environment, the ASRT Education and Research Foundation can develop programs to advance a more knowledgeable work force and a more dynamic workplace," said Dr. Martino.
The project will proceed in three phases--diagnosing, exploring and defining.
The first phase seeks to identify what drives technologist satisfaction and retention as perceived by technologists, managers and administrators. The mail survey will gauge working conditions and attitudes toward the workplace. The survey will be sent to 1,600 technologists and 1,000 administrators. "If one-quarter of these people return their surveys, the response will be adequate to proceed," Dr. Martino said.
More specifically, this survey will evaluate overall satisfaction and break out the factors that contribute to it, such as work policies and technologists’ practices, as well as identify the gaps in perspective among administrators, managers and technologists.
The goal of Phase II, the qualitative phase of the project, is to better understand what drives satisfaction as identified in the first phase. Savitz will conduct in-depth interviews of managers and technologists in those facilities reporting high satisfaction and those reporting low satisfaction.
The third phase survey will help researchers describe, segment and project the various kinds of work environments. It will use the attributes and primary factors of previous information gathering and assessment phases and augment them with information from the in-depth interviews.
"The assessment should show how people perceive or rate their workplace in terms of conditions, satisfaction and providing quality patient care," said Dr. Martino. The report will break out segments of the workplace based on demographics, behaviors and attitudes and then relate the various segments to dependent variables including satisfaction.
The first set of surveys was mailed in late August and the project is expected to be completed by late spring 2002.
Eric Fiedler is an assistant editor at ADVANCE. He can be reached at eric@merion.com.
Update 3/20/02
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