History Case

MR TECHNOLOGIST

Before operating an MRI machine, most MR technologists had earned a two-year degree in radiological technology. If the technologist planned to work solely with MRI, the minimum education requirement was a one-year MR technician diploma. In upstate New York, MR technologists earned approximately $32 per hour; MR technicians earned about $25 per hour.7 Employee benefits typically added an additional 20 per cent to salary figures. After earning a degree and finding employment, new MRI technologists were typically trained by their employer on its MR systems for about three weeks.

Jeff Sinclair, BCMC's sole MR technologist, was scheduled to work 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The first half hour of each day was occupied with setup and debugging of the equipment, called "phantom scanning.' During May, Sinclair had worked an additional 40 hours at a rate of

1.5 times his regular hourly wage. Although the MR machine was scheduled for one scan per hour, it was not meeting that rate (see Exhibit 7). When Wright asked Sinclair about his productivity, Sinclair responded:

Due to poor communication between the patient and the scheduling department, many patients fail to show up on time or cancel their appointment at the last minute. At the other extreme, patients experience frequent delays at the clinic. Some wait as long as an hour before I can start the MRI scan. I alternate between sitting on my butt for an hour or two to running around frantically attempting to placate angry and impatient customers.

7As a comparison, in 2002, the United States Department of Labor established the minimum wage rate at

$5.15 per hour. In upstate New York, an assistant for an MR technologist would earn about $10 per hour.

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I've got to deal with a lot of mistakes in the scheduling department. Patients are booked at the wrong times and they aren't being screened properly. I'm getting patients that shouldn't receive an MRI but they are scheduled and I have to deal with them. Since they had to take a day off work, they get angry when I send them home. And I'm sitting here twiddling my thumbs! The scheduling department really causes me a lot of headaches. They write down that I'm supposed to do scan A, but when the patient gets here, the form says do A and B. Another time there were only three appointments scheduled for a day, and the scheduling department thought the day was full because they couldn't understand what other people had written on the form. The previous MRI provider handled all of the scheduling. Now, however, the scheduling department is expected to buck up and cope with the additional workload.

In addition to the scheduling department, I've got to put up with the radiologist. He wants the images right after each patient is scanned. There is no way I can do that. It takes way too much time. I do it when I have a slow moment.

I've been putting in a lot of overtime since I started here and, to be frank, I am getting sick of it. The money is nice, but I have a family and my son is experiencing some medical problems. I need to be there for him. I really don't want any more hours.

Things are improving a bit, though. I was originally trained on equipment from GE, but during May, the clinic used a Siemens unit. It took me a while to get used to it. Now, we've got our GE equipment and I'm much happier with it.

Monica Zimmerman, manager of the radiology department, was concerned that Sinclair was working too hard and for too long. She was pressuring Wright and Saskiw to hire another MR technologist to alleviate Sinclair's load and improve the lead-time. She believed that the most appropriate move would be to add a partial second shift in the late afternoon and early evening hours.

In considering this option, Saskiw said:

Hiring another MR technologist is a big decision for Quinte MRI.

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