My student liaison asked me whether I was beginning to find it monotonous yet, and if I’m honest the answer would be a little. Despite the ‘high tech’ nature of the job I believe there is far more skill required in general radiography. The staff here are all from different professional backgrounds - the superintendent is pure nuclear medicine, one is bioscience, another diagnostic radiography and another from therapy. The process is identical for every patient and rather like a barium or IVU list you get to say the same thing all day. I do everything the qualified staff do, bar cannulate patients. I interview, put on and take off the scanner, input patient details in the very many places they need to be input and carry out daily QC checks. It is my responsibility to make sure I limit the dose I receive from patients once they are injected and therefore radioactive, and to log my daily dose on the computer with the rest of the staff. The superintendent here is very keen that the staff gain an appreciation of where PET/CT fits into the patient’s journey and encourages all the staff to take turns in attending the multidisciplinary team meetings for individual pathologies, which take place weekly.

I have been reading with interest the blogs of the other students doing PET/CT in the midlands and their practice differs from ours in a number of ways. They see upto 7 patients per day for a limited range of pathologies, whereas we image as many as 21 patients a day for a wider range of conditions, so not all oncology. Our tracer uptake time is 90mins versus 60mins - so with more patients in department for longer we have to be very efficient at getting them through the system to maximise the two scanners. We try and limit our ‘beds’ to 6 for a half body scan which runs from inferior orbital rim to mid thighs. Shorter patients allow us to get away with just 5 beds sometimes. A bed = 5mins scanning time and then it moves position. Less beds means less dose to the patient. For patients over 100kg the bed time gets increased from 5 mins to 6 or 7minutes. Most scans are conducted with the arms up over the head, if for any reason the patient can’t manage this, then all subsequent scans must also be done arms down for consistency. This is for reporting because so much anatomy moves. It is also preferential to keep arms out of the scan because they produce alot of scatter. The only time a scan is conducted routinely arms down is if a melanoma is suspected on the arms. We also seem to inject slightly less - aiming for 350Mbq (+/- 10%) versus 400Mbq.