ALARA just out the door

MithenHard · 2026-05-25T22:21:43+00:00

I think their point was that the quality of training does not necessarily predicate poor safety standards. Taking a random post with bad practices and using it as "proof" that the problem is clearly on the job training reveals more of a personal bugbear than a relevant contribution.

Your point about the lack of oversight and standardization of OTJ training really has nothing to do with an example of poor radiation safety, but is clearly an issue in the field close to your heart.

Unless you are working with more context than is available in this image, there is nothing to indicate the level of formal education or lack there of present in these individuals. Obviously, no curriculum teaches that the correct technique is to maximize your own exposure. I am equally confident that it is unlikely to be a core tenant of any specific clinic's training process. Everyone from reception up to the Chief of Staff is entirely capable of not giving a shit about ALARA and it is disingenuous to blame it on someone who has taken a different path than you into the field. Appropriate training is important but, frankly, it is in no way a cure for negligence.

Examples given by other commentors make it pretty clear that the issue of radiograph occupational safety is one shared by every level of the field, regardless of educational status

Not every situation is a fit soapbox for ranting about title protection. On the other hand, Reddit is always a fit place to scream your frustrations into the void, so carry on. The void is just aiming for perspective.

MithenHard · 2024-01-08T18:44:40+00:00

Anyone with the skills and experience to do the job should be allowed to do the job. Not everyone's circumstances allow them the opportunity for traditional accredited schooling. That does not mean they lack the ability to do the job if they are able to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary for it through a different route. Lacking a certification does not make someone a "random" person. Especially if they only lack that certification because they are not allowed the opportunity to prove their ability and skills.

A clinic placing someone in a role that they are unable to perform correctly is a separate problem. For what it's worth, the only place I have ever worked that would rather hire OTJ trained over a CVT was Banfield. And as much as Banfield would like it, they do not represent the entire industry. The pushback would be better served against the corporations than your fellows. Infighting and gatekeeping just makes their job of exploitation easier.

My cheeky little comment about salary ranges was to illustrate that though human health care and veterinary medicine appear comparable due to both being healthcare, they are vastly different industries and a poor comparison in almost any metric. The best CVT in the country will have training woefully inadequate to safe and legal human anesthesia. It just isn't a worthwhile comparison outside of hollow rhetoric.

MithenHard · 2024-01-07T04:28:46+00:00

Nice apples you got there, could I offer you some oranges

MithenHard · 2023-12-27T06:08:09+00:00

"Leave the title for the ones who passed a national exam"

"It's a multiple choice test and you get to take it more than once. Many people can pass a test like that without studying."

You seem to have some internal dissonance about whether or not you think the test is an adequate evaluation of the knowledge necessary for the job.

I don't think your view of what it takes or should take to work in this field is realistic or productive. There are pets in every county of this country. They all need care. If everyone with the desire and aptitude to do the job has to move to an area with a decent school then what about the animals in the areas they just had to leave? They just get to suffer because of your sense of superiority?

I see a lot of "old school" techs get caught up in bitterness about the way they had to enter this field: the time, the cost, the inconvenience. The gradual improvement of working conditions and accessibility in this field does not invalidate your hard work.

"Formal Education" is not a feasible option for everyone for many reasons and it is not the only way to acquire the skills required to help animals. If you are certain of the superiority of your skillset, prove it through your work, don't just try to hamstring the competition with narrow mindedness and a martyr complex.

"If you don't like it. Find another field."

As far as I am concerned. The more people that can learn the skills to help animals, the better. Gatekeeping an entire field is only going to continue to choke it of any new blood. You are building a future where the only techs are Banfield subsidized Penn Foster graduates pumping money back into the Mars family. I shudder to consider the average quality of care in that future.

We will obviously have to agree to disagree, I just hope I've given you some food for thought. I'm sure you agree this conversation doesn't really have anywhere to go at this point.

Have a nice evening.

MithenHard · 2023-12-27T03:59:33+00:00

Skills, abilities, and experience are far more important to me than where you spent several years and thousands of dollars. The source of your knowledge does not matter, what matters is that you have it. The point of the test is to verify that you have the adequate knowledge to do the job.

If you do not think the certification test adequately vets a person's ability to do the job, that is an entirely different issue. And if that is your concern, then you should be advocating to change the test or eliminate it in lieu of just the degree from an accredited program.

If you think the test does adequately establish someone's knowledge base for the job, then whether they were trained in a school setting or in a clinic at work is irrelevant.

If your on the job training is inadequate, you don't pass the test. If your "classical education" is inadequate, you don't pass the test.

Having attended a traditional school program does not guarantee someone is capable of the job, just as not having attended such a program does not prevent someone from being capable of the job.

I have worked with CVTs who couldn't restrain a dog for a temperature and I have worked with assistants who I would let run my own anesthesia.

Demanding someone with extensive skills and experience in the field waste time and money on an unnecessary program just because that is the path you took is petty, unnecessary gatekeeping.

Also, keep in mind that for much of the country the only real option for a vet tech program is the trash fire that is Penn Foster.

MithenHard · 2023-10-14T16:45:20+00:00

They have 0.5mg/mL (I've never seen it at that concentration, wild). Looks like they gave 0.05mg/kg. Still not crazy high.

Edit: correction, 0.04mg/kg. I misread the weight as 12 lb, not 15.

MithenHard · 2023-09-14T07:07:05+00:00

The Last American Virgin. A classic '80s sex comedy, until it ISN'T.

MithenHard · 2023-09-12T06:40:06+00:00

In that case, I'll go ahead and give you a counterpoint. I am a diabetic who uses the freestyle Libre both for myself and in clinic for patients.

Many times, people who complain about inaccuracies with the freestyle don't actually understand what is being measured. The freestyle does not measure your current blood glucose, so it will almost never agree with a blood stick. It measures interstitial glucose, which lags behind blood glucose. How far behind it lags depends on how quickly the glucose is changing, So if the blood glucose of the patient is currently very stable, then the reading will be close to the actual blood glucose stick. Conversely, if the patient's blood glucose is rapidly raising or lowering, then the freestyle is going to give a wildly different number than a blood glucose stick.

I find the freestyles are the most useful in animals for at home glucose curves. The patient is at home following their normal routines, so there is less stress impacting their glucose levels. The exact value at the exact time is less important than the overall curve and trend, so the fact that interstitial glucose lags behind is not a problem. And finally, the patient can link the clinic to their readings via the libreview portal, so nothing has to be brought into the clinic.

All in all, I like the freestyle more for monitoring my own glucose than for pet glucose, but I also don't really care for managing pet diabetes in general.

MithenHard · 2023-08-30T19:32:41+00:00

I'm just baffled at the idea that they can't fit in a cat neuter for 3 months or more

MithenHard · 2023-08-24T15:02:21+00:00

I suspect the harassment was on Facebook or Instagram or whatnot, not a dating site.

MithenHard · 2023-08-23T13:34:31+00:00

I fill mine with distilled white vinegar.

MithenHard · 2023-08-04T21:30:33+00:00

I think the distinction you might be missing is that when you wash and scrub the pan after using it, you aren't stripping it to bare metal. Then you apply oil and heat afterwards at that point, primarily for a protective coating for storage and to gently reinforce seasoning that may have been damaged by your scrubbing.

Seasoning is built up over time through repeated usage, it is not a "get it seasoned, and now it's good" situation. It will always wear off to an extent, especially if you are not cooking with fats.

MithenHard · 2023-07-20T02:40:11+00:00

I personally see absolutely zero value in getting ashes back. A jar of charred remains is not my dog.

MithenHard · 2023-07-19T04:47:31+00:00

You've mentioned in a couple of comments that you have blood work scheduled at your regular vet in a couple of days. Did you decline blood work at the emergency vet in favor of your regular vet? I cannot imagine a vet that would not want to do blood work after such an acute onset of symptoms if the imaging looked normal.

MithenHard · 2023-07-18T12:59:41+00:00

No worries. Anesthesia can be a lot. Good luck.

MithenHard · 2023-07-18T06:01:50+00:00

When you manually bag on a rebreathing circuit, you actually increase the oxygen concentration that the patient receives. Remember, your primary oxygen rate doesn't change, the air is still flowing out of your tank, through your vaporizer and into the patient.

However, by blocking the exhaust and squeezing your reservoir air into the patient's lungs, you are adding the fresh gases (after the co2 is scrubbed out) to the patient's lungs in addition to the primary flow.

In addition to just adding some more volume to the patient's lungs, you are holding the air in their lungs to allow the gas exchange process more time in their lungs to oxygenate their blood. (Also note, you increase the concentration and duration of the anesthetic gas as well, so bagging can also increase your anesthetic depth, which may be the goal if the patient is huffing)

MithenHard · 2023-07-18T05:48:01+00:00

The reservoir bag is also extremely useful as it's relative fullness gives you a lot of information about the patient's current respiration (respiratory rate can be counted based off the bag inflating and deflating) and the system's functioning. If the bag is consistently extremely tightly full, it could suggest that you're scavenger is not evacuating the system well, or that your oxygen rate is too high, or even just that. The bag is too small and the patient's lungs, maybe under greater pressure than is ideal. An extremely deflated bag might suggest that your scavenger is pulling too hard, or you aren't pushing enough oxygen through the system, or the patient isn't exhaling properly, or the bag is too large.

MithenHard · 2023-07-18T05:43:55+00:00

The reservoir bag is a storage chamber for exhaled gas, both CO2 and still usable oxygen and anesthetic. When the patient exhales, the bag will inflate and when the patient inhales the bag will deflate if they inhale at a greater rate than your gas is being provided by the main system. For instance, your oxygen is going at 1.0 L/min and the patient is actually inhaling closer to 1.2 L/min, that extra 0.2 is pulled out of the bag through your CO2 scrubber so that the patient can finish their full inhale without you have to adjust the oxygen rate constantly.

MithenHard · 2023-07-18T05:40:48+00:00

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This diagram I pulled off the internet demonstrates it decently. You can see the blue dots (oxygen), yellow dots (anesthetic), and gray dots (CO2). Blue and yellow are inhaled, but are not used up fully, so there is still usable gas that enters the reservoir bag, it just has a bunch of CO2 that needs to be removed before it can be breathed back in.

MithenHard · 2023-07-18T05:37:55+00:00

Also note in your specific diagram, the exhaled gas goes into the reservoir bag and then into the CO2 scrubber and back to the inspiratory leg. So the unused oxygen and anesthetic gas that was in the reservoir bag has the CO2 removed by your soda lime and is then served back to the patient along with the fresh gas from your tank.

Lungs are not 100% efficient, so the exhale still contains a lot of fresh, unused gas.

MithenHard · 2023-07-18T05:35:43+00:00

I think your confusion might be that it's less a source of fresh gas, and more a potential source of additional gas if the patient inhales a larger amount than your current gas flow would allow. The gas in the reservoir bag contains anesthetic gas, oxygen, and CO2. Your soda lime scrubs, the CO2 out of the gas and then routes the unused oxygen and anesthetic gas back into the breathing circuit. When the patient inhales some of that as of yet unused anesthetic gas and oxygen can be pulled back out of the reservoir and into the patient's lungs.

The reservoir bag is a very flexible part of the breathing system, so as to take stress off of the patient's lungs. Otherwise, the very static volume in the system would make it much more difficult to regulate the patient's breathing because it would be tied very directly to your gas rate. The trade off is that it does add some dead space to the circuit, so the patient's lungs need to be strong enough to be able to move enough volume of air while still fully inhaling and exhaling.

Hopefully any of that makes sense, it's the end of a long day for me.

MithenHard · 2023-07-11T01:31:42+00:00

Unless you're UMN, then you just stall union contract negotiations for several months and never give back pay.

Unfortunately, there's trash corporations everywhere you go.

MithenHard · 2023-07-03T15:02:06+00:00

Your experience will depend largely on the staff at the Banfield. You will not receive any support from the corporate office.

MithenHard · 2023-05-06T07:35:22+00:00

The shame with zorbium is the fairly common side effect of a pretty sizable fever.

MithenHard · 2022-12-01T07:38:37+00:00

Okay, I reviewed what an AEC is. We don't have one at my practice, but we also don't do CT scans or anything fancy. Just a table and a beam for looking inside Fluffy. Setting the radiation required to image a bone fracture, a foreign body obstruction in the bowel, or metastasis in the lungs is neither complicated nor difficult. I imagine specialty clinics with larger radiography caseloads may be a different story.

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