13reezy

I'm a nuclear medicine technologist! I'm actually at work as we speak lol. 1) I graduated from a college in savannah Georgia with my bachelors degree in radiologic sciences, specifically nuclear medicine (bachelors degrees are pretty much a must-have nowadays). 2) day to day routine completely depends on where you work! Right now I am at a standalone imaging facility and am able to sit around, do a couple scans a day, then leave. I also work at a hospital and it can get extremely busy where you don't sit down or eat a lunch from the start of the day until the end. 3) nuclear medicine! It's always a growing field...specifically PET imaging is going to be the future in my opinion but nuclear medicine will always be around. Some certifications/credentials are easy to obtain and learn, different branches of radiology (example: X-Ray and Ultrasound) have completely different principles and therefore you can't really switch over easily. But nuclear medicine to PET or CT imaging is relatively simple since they use some of the same principles. 4) being computer literate helps A TON. Lots of people in the field are a little older and have no clue how to actually navigate around software or things of that nature. They will look in amazement while you figure out a way to get images to display properly/ send to PACS systems/ etc. 5) I didn't really have any other career choices particularly. My parents work in hospital settings so I was able to shadow lots of different medical jobs before I found nuclear medicine and it really clicked with me. BONUS: yes, I LOVE my job. Nuclear Medicine is very slow paced sometimes and you get to spend lots of time with the patients to explain the procedure/obtain histories/start IV's/process images/etc.

I'm on mobile so this may not be formatted very well, but if you have any other questions you can message me. I love talking about what I do!

In case you're wondering, I'm 24, been out of college and in the field a little over 2 years now. And fyi we are radiologic TECHNOLOGISTS not technicians ;) (My teacher got mad at me one time when I said technician and I learned it the hard way).

Well, there were a lot of different types of math...you definitely need to be able to think mathematically. Nuclear medicine uses radioactive tracers and so you need to be able to calculate radioactive decay, dosage amounts, and numbers are basically everywhere! So if you don't like math and science, nuclear medicine probably isn't the best idea.

Edit: But obviously they teach you how to do all of these things lol...physics and chemistry play a huge part in nuc med, as well as human anatomy so we had to know a lot of those types of things.

No problem! Glad I could help.

Nuclear medicine is far from emergency medicine. We do have several studies that we do as a STAT basis but the majority of our studies are routine and imaging lasts 30 mins - 2 hours but may take place over several days or weeks. It definitely has some of the same aspects of EMT however (administering medications, starting IVs, monitoring patients, etc).

The program I got trained in was AWESOME. It was a Bachelor's degree program--2 years of core classes followed by 2 years of Nuclear Medicine in which I rotated through 5 different clinical settings for over 1000 hours of clinical experience before I graduated. The best way to prepare for the program would be to take the initiate to learning some basic principles of radiology before applying, and be sure to show enthusiasm about what you hope to learn, it would make a great impression. It was a difficult program though! They only accepted 9 people the year I applied, and only 3 of the original 9 ended up graduating on time. But it is definitely doable, I can attest to that.

Hmm, the majority of weird things I run into in nuclear medicine are the patients I deal with! Living in the south, I run into some really crazy people but that's what keeps everything entertaining. One of the most interesting things about nuclear medicine is that we inject our radioactivity into patients as opposed to "shooting" x-rays through people as they do in x-ray and CT. Also, since we are injecting the patient with radioactivity, you have to be aware of radiation safety and make sure you don't get radiation all over the place!

So far, I haven't found a single matchbox car in a rectum....I've seen lots...and LOTS of unspeakable things but no toy cars in anuses yet lol. On a different note: yes, I am actually VERY comfortable financially. Nuclear medicine pays really well I have found. It is at the higher end of the pay spectrum of radiology jobs, with dead last being Radiography (x-ray) tech, which I would advise against. I was very, very lucky in that I had parents who were able to pay for my college but the job pays well enough, and after obtaining a bachelor's degree, you can go to school for 1-2 more years to be a Physician's Assistant (and start making 100-150k a year!).

All in all, Nuclear Medicine is a sweet gig. I would definitely recommend it if you can deal with needles, radiation, and occasionally poop/vomit/pee/the usual.

I just want to point out that different branches of radiology will have different amounts of jobs open. X-ray jobs can be attained with associate's degrees whereas other branches such as CVIS (Cardiovascular Interventional Sciences) where they assist Cardiologists in performing cardiac catheterizations would be a Bachelor's degree, make twice the money, and have a little more job security!