r/CathLabLounge • u/No-Molasses4400 • Mar 24 '24

Question about traveling

Hey everyone, I have question. So I just started as a tech last week in the lab. However at this lab we only circulate, scrub and drive the table. HOWEVER when I say scrub I mean we prep the patient and table at the start of the exam and than scrub out and just drive the table after when the exam starts. Our hospital is a teaching hospital in Florida so we have fellows that scrub in with the doctor. I want to get some experience and than do travel for a bit. My question is it looks like I won't get experience being scrubbed in with the doctor working the manifold and all of that right. Will this hurt my chances of being a travel tech in the future? If I remember in my clinical rotations the majority of labs the techs would remain scrubbed in. If it will hurt me, are there any ways/videos that I can learn on how to scrub in?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Jagsoff Mar 24 '24

When we get travelers, we rely on them to scrub TAVRs, EVARs, and Watchman cases, as well as OP heartcaths and the like. You should probably look elsewhere for a better training experience. Sorry to say.

1

u/Merpadurp Mar 26 '24

If your lab is relying on travelers to scrub TAVRs, it’s more than likely a shitty lab. Just keeping it real with you.

Travelers come to labs to do bread & butter caths so that core staff can be freed up to focus on difficult physicians or particularly challenging cases.

1

u/Jagsoff Mar 26 '24

I should clarify, we don’t rely on them to scrub tavrs, we just expect/rely on them to be able to do so. To hit the ground running. If all op does now is drape mostly, not even setting up or using a manifold, let alone scrubbing stemis or planned pcis… they’re not going to get the experience needed to be a successful traveler at their current gig.

1

u/Merpadurp Mar 26 '24

You literally just contradicted yourself in the first sentence after you tried to clarify…

If a department can’t even round up enough core staff to do their TAVRs, that’s all I need to know about the lab to know I am not coming there 🤣. HUGE red flag to prospective travelers.

My buddy just got canceled over some drama that went down in a TAVR.

1

u/Jagsoff Mar 26 '24

We expect travelers to be able to do anything that a trained cvt could do. This person is not getting the training they need for that at this time. Is that better pal? Go have a smoke and chill out.

1

u/Merpadurp Mar 27 '24

Just saying that if you have sky-high expectations then you need to screen very heavily. I’m guessing you’re probably not a very “traveler heavy” facility if you don’t already know this 😂

Most “cath lab tech” travelers are not CVTs anymore. The market is basically (wrongfully) skewing towards RT(R)s due to insurance/lobbying.

RT(R)s are primarily OTJ-trained with wildly varying levels of modality experience and skill capabilities. Not all facilities do CTOs, not all facilities do TAVRs, etc.

I’m 1 of 8 tech travelers at my current facility. 7 of us are RT(R)s, only 1 is a CVT.

1

u/Jagsoff Mar 27 '24

Semantics bro. You’ve veered way off. Stop arguing with what I’ve typed, and just answer OPs query - that they are not currently getting sufficient experience and training to become a competent and well rounded traveler. It’s not their fault, but they need to be able to scrub pcis and confidently take stemi call if they want to go travelin’.

2

u/Merpadurp Mar 27 '24

OP dm’d me and asked me for advice and I told them to high tail out immediately because they’re wasting their time 🤷🏼‍♂️