Sink or Swim?

Would you ever throw your child into a lake without a life preserver? I think that's the way we often treat new technologists. Sink or swim. Do or die. Baptism by fire. Send her to the ER by herself and leave her until she either quits or begs for help. Then when she does ask for help, humiliate her by telling her that maybe she's not "cut out" for this kind of work. Far fetched? Believe me when I tell you this happens where I work. It seems like they want to see you fail instead of succeed.

And then there's the OR. Every hospital has one or two surgeons that seem to take out their frustrations on the circulating nurse, the OR tech or the x-ray tech. After working in x-ray for fifteen years, there are still occasions I am subjected to verbal abuse by a surgeon. This happened again recently and this time I took my complaint as far as it would go. Now, a month later I still don't know what was done about it or if anything will change. Where's the support from management?

I've seen so many good people bail out of x-ray because of both these issues. Why? What happened to helping each other, team building and moral support? It's no wonder that techs get so hardened and end up hating their work. There's the attitude that "I had to pay my dues (I got screwed) and so do the new people." Now then, would you throw a poor swimmer into a lake and hope they'd make it back to shore? Or would you throw them a line?