Anne O'Loughlin, clinical specialist radiographer, Cork University Hospital, says digital X-rays make everybody's job much easier
I'm a clinical specialist radiographer in trauma in Cork University Hospital (CUH) emergency department.
We X-ray on average around 130 people every day on referral from the A&E department. I work with four other radiographers who rotate through here on a fortnightly basis. CUH is the only hospital in the State which has a clinical specialist in trauma radiography.
The bulk of our work is dealing with people who come in with what we term minor injuries, although they are not minor injuries to them. People with twisted ankles, knocked elbows and kiddies who have swallowed bits of toys, batteries and coins.
Then we also get the serious trauma patients. People who have fallen from a height or been run over by a car.
High-energy trauma patients will be brought into the resuscitation room straight away and we will go in there to do the initial X-rays - the ones that show life-threatening damage. If they are stabilised, we will get them in to X-ray later for more extensive investigation.
One should never move a trauma patient, so for a radiographer it's a real challenge to get the best X-rays without moving them.
If someone has a back injury and we want to X-ray their spine, we use computerised radiography cassettes, which we place on a tray under the trolley to get an X-ray.
The new department is equipped with digital technology. The quality of digital and computerised X-rays compared with film is superb.
Time is of the essence in A&E and with the new digital equipment we can have every image on the screen in seven seconds.
We can get much, much better detail of the bone and can see the trabeculae (the fine lines on the bone).
This means we can see abnormalities much better.
Our primary job is to demonstrate the patient's condition. Often the doctor does not need to see that a bone is broken - they know that already - but they need to see the direction the fragments have gone and see the extent of damage to plan the treatment.
I have just graduated from a research masters in University College Dublin. The research I carried out centred on the development of a new technique for X-raying the base of the neck, which is the part of the body most damaged in major high-energy trauma.
It's a very difficult area to X-ray because the shoulders are usually in the way.
The technique most commonly used is the swimmers' projection where one of the arms is brought up and back as if the patient is doing a back stroke. It separates the shoulders and allows you to see the base of the neck.
It doesn't work for all patients. The technique I developed plays around with the exposure factors and the beam of the X-ray to get a collinated picture of the base of the neck.
Although it doesn't work for all patients it means that the patient is not moved and it involves a much lower dose of radiation than the swimmers' projection.
I work from nine to five in the trauma. Also I do on-call cover for different areas in the hospital such as the A&E department, handling emergency pacemaker procedures, angiography and CT scans.
Aside from the day-to-day running of the department, all radiographers in the department go to quarterly research meetings to keep our skills and knowledge up to date.
Once a month, we have communication meetings. I am also responsible for health and safety and the induction of new employees.
I think it takes a certain type of person to work in A&E. You need to be comfortable working around trauma. It's all about how you look at it.
I love trauma because although you can't stop people having accidents, you can at least be there to help them when they do.
A huge amount of our patient do recover and go back to have a life after.
(In an interview with Fiona Tyrrell)