Back to the Daily Grind

*Melissa*

It has been nearly two weeks since our return to work. The holidays certainly were lovely – we had a car for a brief moment; we did a bit of exploring the town; we did a bit of traveling; we had a few “first times”. But that is long gone now – no more car: it’s back to the bus; our exploring has come to a halt; it is simply that: Back on that roller coaster ride of “Life as a Foreign Extern”.

Now that we are steadily plowing through the 3^rd quarter of our externship, the dynamic at work has certainly changed. We are in a state of “limbo” – we are students, are we still required to annoy our coworkers to come listen to us identify our patients (or – as some still prefer – identify the patient themselves. Not a great boost of confidence i.e. trust). Yet as the same time, we are there just as often as every other full time employee. We are seen as a radiographer, but we are seen as inferior students. Weare familiar with everything that we are allowed to do – but because we are not allowed to do quite everything, we get met with quite a bit of frustration from nurses and other support staff who see us as employees, and expect us to be able to do/answer everything.

This last bit had been quite the “spot of bother” for me in particular lately. Although the great majority of the “supporting staff” is wonderful and lovely, there are a couple which irritate me to no end. They pretend to not know my name, and never address me – only the other “official” radiographers. Just last week I had one who kept saying “thank you ----“ and using the official tech’s name, even though I was doing the tasks. But I must be the cordial one, and smile, and be polite. When you’re not getting paid it all gets a bit tiring on some afternoons.

We have a special course at school, our “extern prep” course, right before we leave Klamath Falls. We get warned about all the aspects that might come up, and get reminded about all the common sense things:

don’t get involved in gossip, don’t take sides, be on time, show up for work, don’t argue with the techs, etc. And amongst other things we get to question some of the students who are on extern at the time. One of the most common things they mention is how bad it is to not be getting paid.

We have made it over 7 months before starting to really be bothered by this side-effect, but it’s definitely starting to kick in. By far the most frustrating thing about externship thus far, however, is not the missing paycheck (although it is up there – don’t get us wrong!). Chad and I have both

agreed that the most frustrating thing about externship is our lack of independence. It is Flinders student policy that we are not allowed to perform any exams without (as I mentioned above) having another tech there to identify the patient, and then that tech must “complete” that exam when we are done. There is nothing worse than having a bench full of requests, and not being able to do a single one of them because you do not have a chaperone.

The worst thing about the lack of independence, however, is the detriment it has to your confidence. It is incredibly difficult to build confidence in our skills because we are constantly having our positioning and our methods tweaked around a bit (very few radiographers

can watch you do an exam without touching SOMETHING – ANYTHING). So, if we have a new trick we want to try, we rarely get the chance to try it out. Even after completing our “competencies” – proving that we are competent enough to complete a particular exam independently, there are some touchy techs who just won’t let you complete it on your own. This gets to be a real pain, sometimes, as is the most common thing that gets us down.

Outside of work, we are back to the “not much” response to what we’ve been up to. We did manage to make it out to the “Schutzenfest”, though. Adelaide’s “biggest international festival” – and what is compared to a mini-Oktoberfest. I figured since we missed the Greek festival, we might as well go to the German one; have a Kransky and pint, see some German stuff.

Boy! Let me tell you about Australia’s festivals: LOTS of people, drinking A LOT, and sitting around on the grass for hours on end. I think this is pretty much Australian culture in general, as this is how our co-workers describe cricket matches as well. It was literally hundreds of people lying around all day long on the grass, drinking lots and lots of beer. It was a bit unnerving wandering around amongst so many drunken people staggering along in herds. And that was literally it – cigarette, beer, and kransky booths. And a place to buy a Schutzenfest hat with a beer stein on it. Nothing German at all.

We did a few loops, had a stein of Cider (no beer for us!), and a cheese Kransky, and watched some drunk people win al lot of money for holding up a jug of beer for as long as they could (called “The Strong Arm Competition”) and called it quits – not surprisingly, seeing a few people passed

out drunk on the sidewalk on the way back to the train station.

I think from now on, we might skip some of these “Cultural Festivals”.