Personal Experience Essay: Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

My first CHOA experience was at Urgent Care—Satellite Blvd. One thing I realized on my first day there is that there were a significant number of differences between pediatric and adult patient care. I had some adjusting to do, and it took me a couple of days to learn the new form of patient care with pediatrics.

One of the first things I realized is that there is a lot more explaining and a lot more reassuring when it comes to pediatrics. We not only explain to the patients the procedure but also to their parents. Parents are more involved in assisting us with their child and staying in the rooms to help hold the child.  Most of the time the kid does not want to cooperate, or the kid is scared. That makes getting that quick x-ray picture longer to get. I did realize the techs were good at is calming the kids down even before they entered the x-ray room. Once in the x-ray room, they would try to make things fun every step of the way.  They would call the shields “pretty dresses”, half shields “cute skirts”, and the x-ray tube just a big camera. Sometimes I was surprised when I would see a kid walk into the x-ray room so scared with tears in their eyes, to then leave the room laughing and shouting “that did not hurt at all mommy”. Overall communication is always the key! However, with a twist, you have to make it fun.

Another thing I realized working with pediatrics is different is the importance of technique used, marker placement, collimation borders, and shielding. Even though it’s always important to shield patients and to collimate to the area of interest only, at the hospital I would see techs not do it. It was not implemented as it is at CHOA. We shield every single patient including parents. Before sending x-ray images to PACS, they put collimation borders around all images because radiologists only accept images for pediatrics that way. Markers are always used, and I do not see any digital marker being placed.  Lastly, the technique used for pediatrics is so low compared to adults. Less radiation is used because children are more radiosensitive than adults.

Overall, I went into this CHOA experience open-mindedly. I was not sure if I wanted to work with children or not.  I did enjoy my experience at CHOA, and I loved the new challenges it brought with patient care. This experience, however, made me realize that I don’t see myself working at a pediatric facility.