My third week into my externship and I have learned so much!
I got transferred into a different team in the same clinic. I am with the spinal team. We help patients that have pain in their back and neck due to the spinal nerves. The doctors that are on the team performs procedures that help with the pain.
I had a very busy day for my first day on the new team. My supervisor texted me saying he wanted to talk to me about something. When I got to work I went to go find him to talk to him. I found him and he wanted to talk to me about getting transferred to a new team to get more experience. He wanted to move me upstairs with the spinal team. I was very excited to have the opportunity to get this experience. This team does a lot of procedures, which was something I was very excited about. I got to meet the other MAs on the team. I also got to see a few procedures that day. When we go in we have to wear a lead suit to protect yourselves from the X-rays. They have to take x-rays of the back or neck to find where they are trying to do the injection to help with the pain. Then while they put the needles in they use the x-rays to help guild themselves to the specific spot that they need to be. It was really cool to see how they used the x-rays to guild the needle and everything else through the skin, muscles, to get to the nerve.
With the spinal team, I am learning more about how to room the patients quickly but efficiently. There are 2 ways that we need to know how to room patients. I have the normal check up with the doctor and the pre-procedure and post-procedure. Another thing that I’m getting the hang of is getting comfortable with knowing how to call patients about either medications or something they had a question about for the doctor. I once tried it and messed up a few time. I even said the doctors name wrong. But you have to give me some slack… the doctors name is kind of hard to pronounce. Anyways, I made a few mistakes but I learned a lot from them.