My sister-in-law is an ultrasound technician at a large Catholic related hospital. She started out as an X-ray tech and moved over twenty years ago to ultrasound. Early in her career the patient load was reasonable. Rarely were more than a half dozen patients were scanned in a shift. She would work at the hospital and take occasional side jobs with doctors who needed extra help to use there equipment in private offices. Over the years the patient load has increased so that it is now common to have nearly a dozen scans per tech in a shift. The requirements have increased also. Where once a patient would come in for one or two scans during term now scans are much more frequent. Where five sets of pictures were sufficient, now doctors order a hundred different sets per patient.
She keeps in shape, runs almost every day and does occasionally half marathons. Recently something in her wrist suddenly became extremely painful. Knowing that her fellows techs had a heavy workload and there isn’t enough personnel to keep up with the workload she tried to work until she could no longer function. The hospital was not sympatric, but after a few days she did receive advice to keep the arm immobile for four to six weeks, and is applying for Workman’s Comp.
Relieved of the stress of a constant stream of work, she looked around at the rest of the technicians. Almost everyone has back pain, wrist or arm wraps. Other technicians told of going to the Emergency Room telling the Physician Assistant (not even hospital workers get to see MDs), of the pain experienced while working and being told “You don’t know what pain is”.
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My sister-in-law began reading the available literature and found that for over a decade it has been known that over 90% of ultrasound technicians work with pain. A fifth of them end there careers with disabling injuries. There is a 2006 Center for Disease Control study with recommendations for better equipment, work rules and decreased workloads. She was taken aback when she told her fellow workers she was going to have to take some weeks off the response was not "OMG you can't, we can't keep up with the work now", it was "Please try to get us some help we can't work like this."
I'm sure to health care workers this sounds naïve, but this is a hospital! It is supposed to be run by people with the motto of "First do no harm". Yet they have created a system that harms and disable their own workers.
We need strong active unions.