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MEMBERSHIP NEWS
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Being a “tech“ in Germany. All the same but different? – How I became an RT Katrin Koziel, RT, from Mannheim, Germany shares her story below: I had internships as a photographer, a shop assistant (clothes and books), worked at a vineyard, as an assembly-line worker. While some jobs were appealing, something was always amiss. Finally, I ended up for two weeks in a hospital as help for a laboratory assistant. The Assistant, who showed and told me a lot about Microbiology and various blood tests, let me analyze urine samples and test the blood sugar of her patients. She also was the one to do the x-rays on the weekends. There I became hooked! Doing “photographs “with high end (ok, not that high end but what did I know?) technology, having the medical knowledge to help people. That had a nice ring to it, although I had never heard of a radiographer or as it is called in Germany MTRA (Medical-Technical-Radiology-Assistant). A little more than a year later, after I got my Abitur, (diploma from German secondary school qualifying for university admission or matriculation), I started my education at the School for Medical Technologists at the Ludwigshafen Hospital Clinical Care Centre with a month long internship at a surgical ward. That is part of the educational program. In Germany you do not attend university to become a technologist but vocational school. The training lasts 3 years and includes diagnostics (X-Ray, CT, MRI, and Angiography), nuclear medicine, radiotherapy and radiation physics / dosimetry. The first year we also had classes in mathematics, general physics and biology, as well as physiology, anatomy, psychology and some I cannot find a translation for. We attended those together with our classmates from the laboratory training. We were quite the mix age wise. Some over 40 trying to get a fresh start after staying home to raise their children, one girl only 16 (special permission from the government has been provided due to the law for the protection of the youth) because there is no restriction on degrees from our various school systems to become a R.T. We had a training room with an old x-ray apparatus, a darkroom, laboratories to learn Radioimmunoassay. Everything else was theory or internships in our own hospital or 7 others in and out of the city. That was always the best part. Being able to apply what you heard / learned and see what is possible, what could be better, what is different in this facility, do I get better and more confident with time. In this school we had hands-on training in the morning, theoretical classes in the afternoon mostly, sometimes the other way round. Going into the third year, the practical part was 3 to 3.5 whole days and the rest classes. Every semester we had exams and received an interim report. The final, state approved examination after 3 years leads you to your official certificate - you are now allowed to call yourself a Medical-Technical-Radiology-Assistant. I now could choose to work in a radiology department and / or nuclear medicine in a hospital or a medical practice, in radiation therapy, with radiation physicists in the hospital or research facilities in dosimetry. I did choose diagnostics, worked 5 years in x-ray, angiology, mammography, CT and PET-CT and finally was able to get my hands on MRI. Because of my radiologist at that time, I was able to also do a little research and put my findings on a poster, which was submitted to the SMRT. In 2009 I attended my first SMRT Annual Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. There I found a lot of friends and MRI enthusiastic people; worked hard to attend another meeting and another. Always happy to find new opportunities to learn new features and see different approaches to problems we all know. Since my first MRI contact, I try to spend as much time as possible with “my machines” but as I am now in the managing team in my hospital in Mannheim this time is rare. Also there are some societies for radiographers in Germany and I feel the international input is more essential then ever. The world connects faster, new inventions or advancements are coming almost daily and it is hard to keep track, to keep up. To stay curious about what is possible, what there is still to learn, what attracted me to this profession in the first place; that I want to share with others and maybe take young people today with me on that journey. In times where money is everything and individuals do rarely count that is difficult to do. Believe me, I know. But together, we might be able to go far.
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Signals is a publication produced four times per calendar year by the
International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine for the benefit of the SMRT membership and those individuals and organizations that support the educational programs and professional advancement of the SMRT and its members. The newsletter is the compilation of editor, Julie Strandt-Peay, BSM, RT (R)(MR) FSMRT, the leadership of the SMRT and the staff in the ISMRM Central Office with contributions from members and invited participants.
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