No acting today

Usually every other Tuesday we have an exam in our Positioning Lab Competency class. The exam usually entails actually physically demonstrating the various radiographic positions that we learned that week. You pick a partner from class and, in front of an instructor, go thru the motions of performing an x-ray exam. Patient communication is graded on heavily so I have developed a little speech that incorporates all the points that the instructor is looking for. It goes something like this "Hello Mr. Johnson, how are you today? My name is Dustin, I'll be taking your x-rays today.....can you please take off all your metalic jewelry......are you currently pregnant or think you might be pregnant?.....can you verify your date of birth for me?.......are you aware of any metal objects in your body?.......yada yada yada".

But for some reason today, I got to class all ready to give my partner the best imaginary x-ray that anyone has ever had, but instead of acting out the procedure, we had to write it down, including every single little detail. We are normally given 2 random positions, out of the 10-15 we are studying that week, to demonstrate for the instructor, but this time we were given three. Luckily mine were fairly easy, an AP pelvis, AP hip and Lateral hip. In case you can't tell, this week we are studying positions for the pelvic girdle.

Well, one hour and one cramped hand later, I finished describing all three positions and handed in my exam. Most of the time I overstudy this stuff so I was able to include a bunch of little details that probably weren't needed like "Medial rotation of the limb is contraindicated in patients with such-and-such pathology" and "the use of a gonad shield is recommended unless it is likely to be superimposed over the area of interest", etc. So as long as I included the "really important stuff" as well as all the little extras I think I will do pretty well. I just feel sorry for my instructor for having to read 4 pages of my horrible chickenscratch-like handwriting.