The hidden STEMM powerhouse of medical imaging with Chaundria Singleton

Michele Ong

Every person will have an experience with medical imaging at some point in their lives. For most, the first experience will be with an ultrasound before you're even born. But how much do we understand about these fields and the professionals who form part of our extended care team in health care? Chaundria Singleton is a radiologic technologist, speaker, author, and host of the podcast, a couple of rad techs. Join us as we speak with Chaundria about her journey to radiologic technology, the breadth of scope of these careers, and how medical imaging science communication empowers both practitioners and patients for better outcomes. I'm Michelle Ng, and this is Steam Powered. Good morning, Chaundria. Thank you so much for joining me today on Steam Powered. I'm really looking forward to having a chat with you about your journey.

Chaundria Singleton

Yes. I am too. Thank you for inviting me, Michelle. This is exciting to connect again.

The evolution of Chaundria's science communication.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. It's an absolute pleasure. And, you know, been following you since. We met at Matty Staudt's podcasting courses and, you know, it's been so amazing watching you grow.

Chaundria Singleton

Thank you. It's been amazing for me too because when I first got into social media, it was about something else. As you remember when we were in the course together, I talked about health and wellness, more of a different pathway, not radiology and the advice that I got from the course we were in together was talk solely about radiology. That's a topic that no one's really touching in a way that you can touch. I've been doing it for twenty plus years. My husband is a technologist as well. So we have so many things we could share. And I thought to myself, let me go ahead and listen to that advice. And I'm glad I did.

Chaundria's journey to radiologic technology.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. So we're gonna, you know, rewind a little bit and we'll talk about, you know, what made you decide to pursue radiologic technology when, you know, all the way back when you were little Shondria or medium sized Shondria.

Chaundria Singleton

Well, it's so interesting because I never ever saw myself working in healthcare. I had a business doing hair for many years, um, since high school, I have my own salon, uh, my mother turned our garage into a salon, I had a full fledged business until I wound up getting ill and had to I always took college courses even with my business because I knew I wanted to finish my degree, I just wasn't sure where and I was busy working, making money and I wasn't sure when it would fit in, but I always took at least two courses every semester. Once I got ill and had to start a new career, it was my second chance at a career in my mid-20s, I said I'm going to go for respiratory therapy because I have some friends that are respiratory therapists and they have such a cool schedule. I love to travel, I love to have flexibility in my life. And I said, well, let me go ahead and do that. Got in shadowed as you should do in healthcare professions to make sure that's what you want to do because they are so different. And I realised I didn't want to do respiratory. I don't like mucus, I don't like spit, I don't like that kind of stuff. So that was the wrong career for me, Michelle. And I went back to my counselor and I said, you know, my test scores show that I'm good for healthcare, but this just isn't it and she said, how about radiologic technology? And I was like, what is that? I never heard of that word before and she said, well, take x rays of bones and I'm like, that seems pretty cool, let me shadow. I shadowed, I loved it, I was like this is for me and I didn't really even understand the scope of what my career was going to be just from that shadowing until I started school at Emory University School of Medicine's medical imaging program a couple years later and I fell in love with all the different avenues that are open to us in medical imaging.

Michele Ong

That is very, very cool. And I love the fact that they did encourage you to shadow because there's so many careers right now where that isn't really an option unless you take up an internship or, you know, you're able to find someone, you know, outside of these formal structures and say, hey, I just really wanna find out more about what to do. Can I kind of follow you around for a bit? So is that something that they encourage through the school, or is that just what the ecosystem's like?

Chaundria Singleton

Well, back then you had to shadow. Some schools don't require it. They don't require it because of HIPAA and the other things that we have to be careful of now in health care versus twenty plus years ago. You have to be kind of careful. So insurance doesn't sometimes allow health care facilities just to let anybody in. So you have to be accepted into the program or close to being accepted and some programs do require some type of shadowing. You can always volunteer at hospitals. They are always looking for volunteers and that way you can kind of already be in the system and shadow that way if you know you want to work in health care. And that's one of the things that I do appreciate is that most health care professions give you at least a few days of shadowing before you say yes to it.

The scope of medical imaging careers.

Michele Ong

So you said you hadn't really got an idea about where your career was gonna go in radiologic technology until after you started studying. So what did that look like in your head about what your career would be shaped like?

Chaundria Singleton

I thought I was just gonna be taking X rays of bones, honestly. I was like, X rays of bones? Okay. I can do that. Like, and then I knew they went into the Operating Room taking live x rays of bones as doctors were doing surgery. I mean, that was just all I really knew until my first day of class with radiologic technology programs, you are immediately put into clinical settings where you're in the hospital, you have your feet to the ground, you're working day one, well, maybe second week, not the first week. First week, you're of getting acclimated, but it's classroom or you're in clinic. There is no in between, no one of the other, which to me sets it apart because it is a profession as you're learning, you're learning on the job, plus you're learning classroom stuff. It's very intense. I thought to myself when I started, oh my goodness, like, can I please just sit in a classroom for a week or two or a month? You're throwing me to the wolves out here in the clinical setting. I've never worked in a hospital before. I've never seen the things I'm seeing or the smells I'm smelling. This, it was very overwhelming. But what I saw also beyond that was the fact that in medical imaging, because I always thought it was radiologic technology, the umbrella is actually medical imaging, which houses radiologic technology, CT technologists, MRI, nuclear medicine, radiation therapy, positron emission technologists, PET scan technologists. You have bone density technologists, you have mammography technologists, medical dosimetrists, MRI, like their ultrasound. There are so many. And then we have our own physician assistants, is what we call the radiologist assistants, which is comparable to nurse practitioners. It's a master degree level advanced practitioner. And you have them in our field. They do the things that radiologists do as well. This is very similar to a physician's assistant nurse practitioner in hospitals. People don't know that and for me, when I got into clinical, was overwhelmed, but I also saw, wow, this is a really fascinating profession, medical imaging. I can do so much, I can still love on my patients and then if I don't want to do patient care, don't have to because now with AI, radiology is one of the main medical professions that really uses AI, is affected by AI in a good way because in MRI, I see it, which has opened up possibilities for more advancement in our profession because it speeds up the scans, which creates more work. People think it would take away from work, but it actually kind of it takes away some areas, but it speeds up the scanner, which creates more time for us to put on more patients. And I just saw so many possibilities and that's why I have so many things that I can do in radiologic technology and medical imaging. I do MRIs, CTs, nationally certified in mammography. I have certifications for x-ray. All of those are the patient centered things, and I do other things as well, but I just saw the possibilities.

Michele Ong

Yeah. Uh, the scope is immense, and it really allows you to follow anywhere your interest would take you in health care Because, you know, health care or medical imaging technology, all of us has to encounter it at some point in our lives. So the fact that you're able to see this immense scope and, you know, it's how can you choose?

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah. It's really hard. I sometimes sit and think in my twenty three years, what else could I have done or what else can I do? Because I don't feel like it's over. I'm very proficient in all of them, that's the thing, you can do a lot of these professions and they cross over. So when I do content on my social media, I like to give my content is just not about educating the public, it's educating technologists, high school students to understand that if you were like me, all I knew was doctor and nurse growing up. That was the only thing I knew. I didn't know about all these other viable careers that make really good money, have amazing schedules and you can start out just like nursing with a two year degree. Registered nurses are not all bachelor degree degrees. Most enter with an associate's and bridge over the same with radiologic technology and medical imaging. Most of us enter with an associate's degree and then we add on to it, uh, later, but what's important in our profession as well is how you strategically do it. I wanted to learn what would make the most sense, how do all of these sciences and health careers cross over within medical imaging. So what I did, learned what they all were. I got my first two years, the first year I got all my clinical exams and you have to do a certain amount of exams. I did two years worth in one year, got them all done and by the second year, I was able just to float through every modality that I wanted to so I could learn about this profession and that's when I realised I love interventional radiologic technology, I love radiation therapy, I love, I loved all of them, but I had to choose one that I could really stick with. So CT and interventional, I really, in radiation therapy, I stayed in almost weeks at a time in each one in that year and what I saw was they each required certain things. Some required more geometry because you had to use radiation therapy trajectories to go through body habitus and tumours to get through healthy tissue into unhealthy tissue to radiate safely. So you needed to be strong on math, strong on different principles, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, all of those things, medical dosimetry the same way. Also learned that you have to kind of be good at statistics and other things as well. Certain sciences are really important, different type of physics, different chemistries if you're doing nuclear medicine, like every type of science is so different depending on what modality you enter. And so, I knew for two years I was going to be learning radiation based principles. So, I had to think which modalities like CT, mammography, interventional, they all were based off of radiologic technology principles. MRI is not based off of ionizing radiation, It uses radio waves. So that's a different principle. So I chose to go to school for radiologic technology, crossover and train for CT, which was the same principle, it's just cross sectional anatomy. So you learn how to look at the body in three different planes. It's just so fascinating how we use it and then I learned MRI, which uses cross sectional but it uses radio waves and you have to take exams for each one of those, you have to show proficiency and then it depends on the machines you work on. Each machine is different and I actually work on all machines, all of the machines, whether it's GE, Siemens, Philips, Toshiba, Hitachi, I know all of them, Philips And that is a whole another side of what we do. Like, all this the the acronyms for STEM fall within medical imaging, in my opinion.

Michele Ong

Yes. 100% that. And, you know, everything you've just listed, it is a true specialisation in health care because you do have to have a broad understanding of anatomy, physiology, but you also have to have this very refined knowledge of the way that each of these bits of equipment work. Because, as you said, it's similar but different because they use different foundational types of technology in science to be able to produce the images that they do.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah.

Michele Ong

It is yeah. It it sounds very exciting in terms of being able to see what we can actually do with science and also see how it evolves, especially when you said with AI and how that's influencing the way that technology is moving forward too.

Chaundria Singleton

Oh, yeah.

Michele Ong

So cool.

Informatics and IT in healthcare.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah. It's really cool. I recently was talking to a informatics director at one of the big universities, we were having a call, uh, because she wanted my opinion on something, I wanted her opinion on something and I learned so much from her when it came to the informatics and for so many years nursing informatics was a thing and it still is, but what wasn't a thing was other healthcare professions being allowed to work in informatics. It was always either IT or nursing. Well, hospitals realised the way things are going that they were having a gap within the connection between doctors and imaging professionals and the whole department. This is how big medical imaging is to not only financially to a hospital, but the structure and how everything communicates. Like you said earlier, Michelle, I'm sure everyone has come in contact with the medical imaging study at once in their life. Actually, most people if not 100% have and one of those is getting an ultrasound of your belly. When your mom's pregnant with you, got to get an ultrasound at some point. So we all have gotten some kind of medical imaging done in our life. Most people get a CT, most people get a mammogram at a certain age or MRI or x-ray, you break a bone, you cough too much, you get a chest x-ray, but what people don't understand is the connection, the IT part and what hospitals have realised is we need to employ imaging technologies in informatics. So IT was missing that connection. Nursing didn't understand imaging. We have to employ people in our informatics hospital system who went to school for medical imaging. So those people that are in our field that say, you know what, I went to school for radiology technology, I love science, but I'm not really a people person. There's a place for you too in this profession, you can come in and work the IT side of it. I mean, and it is booming. They have huge conferences, HIMSS, Sims, those are some of the biggest informatics conferences held in The United States and worldwide is really big. I was just at a fast food restaurant grabbing food on the way in and the young lady heard me talking and saw my scrubs and said are you a nurse? And I said well, no, do radiology. She said I started to go to school for that. I'm like well, you still can if you're in school and I talked to her about her options but this is this is why I love this conversation because it taps on STEM and really looking at individuals because they are very smart students in school. People that think that they have to have a four year degree to be considered for a STEM program. What they don't understand is I went to an Ivy League school and got a two year degree for medical imaging. Of course, I went twenty plus years ago, that school no longer has that program. They have a different type of program in medical imaging. But I did so many things with my associate's degree and so many others have done. Now I'm working on a bachelor's business bachelor's, business and science, it's like a dual one. But for so long I've been so busy in my profession working, employing doctors and employing others. Yeah, I have a company I've had for twenty years that worked closely with doctor's offices and imaging centers and helped them make money and employed other technologists. So you know, was really busy, and takes time to finish your degree.

Why medical imaging is a STEMM field.

But I just like to share that fact that we are a STEM program in so many facets, we hit almost every letter of the acronym in multiple ways and that's just the main modalities I've told you about within each one of those 12 or 11 modalities, there are sub modalities that are even more intense, Michelle. I mean, just have such an exciting and this week is rad tech week every year. First week in November, we celebrate radiologic technology and the excitement on social media by the technologists and the administration and the associations is so heartwarming because for so long we have not been seen And what people don't know is we are the third largest medical profession in the nation. You have doctors number one, nurses number two, and medical imaging is number three. So definitely a profession to look out for.

Michele Ong

And it's, you know, as you said, it's only recently that they've started to recognise it more publicly as being such an important part of the health care profession. And, you know, the fact that we underestimate, as you said, because we see doctors, we see nurses. But the field of radiologic technologist is, you know, it's an extended part of your care team. And even if you don't always see them, their work is there. Their work is present in your diagnosis, in your management of your conditions. And it's wonderful that you do have rad tech week now and that fact that it's being seen and people more aware of the work that you do in looking after everyone else.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah. And doing more than just taking pictures of bones like when I thought when I first went to school for it, was like, yeah, for me, I like to do career days and I take my bookend, I go in and talk about with slides and pictures, play games with the kids so they can understand what these exams look like, who are the people that are doing these exams and that this is the profession that while you're going through your education, you can look at attaining because it is one that I don't see going anywhere anytime soon. Uh, it's been around for many, many, many years and like you say, the spotlight is being put on us for various reasons. I think more people in our profession are seeing the need and the confidence to speak up about what they do and not just saying oh, I'll let them call me a nurse, uh, because we always get called nurses, uh, and our organisations that advocate for us are really spearheading campaigns that are on nationwide TV shows, you know, they're really spearheading local organisations, they're really trying to get membership up and really help individuals in the field to see hey, y'all, we are a really, really big deal. And you have to first believe in yourself before other people will believe in you. That's that's just what I feel.

Michele Ong

Unless people in the profession are prepared to stand up for their profession, you're not going to make any progress. Yeah.

Entrepreneurship in radiologic technology.

So you run your own business. Like, you said you've been doing it for over twenty years, running your own business in radiologic technology. So what does that involve?

Chaundria Singleton

So for me, it's multiple things and it's changed over the years because of the many different things that we do. It started out as a staffing company. So I saw a need where individual technologists needed to have local staffing opportunities because you could travel outside of the state, but that wasn't everyone's situation. Everyone maybe didn't want to leave their home and travel for eight or sixteen weeks somewhere else, which was me. So I worked for a couple other people that had local travel companies, they were technologists and they had different hospitals and I learned, made connections and I said, well, I can do that and keep myself employed. And I had some mentors that really encouraged me to do it. I started the business for several years, I didn't make any money, but I learned things. I learned how to run a business, a staffing company, I made mistakes, I did what I needed to do, I made some wins and it turned into staffing for imaging centers. I had really good clients. I really appreciate the clients that I've had over the years and I've had long term clients. I've been able to employ other technologists like technologists were able to employ me. It's the support system, but I also was able to turn around and do consulting. So what happens is some imaging centers need to get re registered with the state, with national organisations to keep their accreditation and every technologist that works in the facility doesn't always know how to do it because I had the experience of multiple machines, multiple scans, I knew how to do it. So they would hire my company to come in and get them accredited. So there were different facets to it as well. Um, so I would do applications. So we have another facet of our profession which is called clinical applications where you go in someone buys a new scanner, you as a technologist goes in you teach the technologist how to operate the scanner, to add protocols in, how to have some workflow issue, uh, corrections and you're just basically there to get them onboarded onto this new software, this new scanner and you're there for like a week at a time and you offer help later on. So I did that for many years. My company would get contracted out to do that. It's just so many ways that it started to evolve from just starting as a staffing company that employed me. It's so many different layers to it, but those are the main ways that I was able to have that company for twenty years, which I still have it as well. And it's evolved now into the social media and consulting and speaking company that I have now.

Michele Ong

That's incredible. And yeah, again, a lot of the things that people take for granted in the kind of work that needs to be done because there are accreditations. There is an ongoing training that you need to do to maintain your skill set and to grow as a professional in this space. So the fact that you've been running your business for this long, what is the benefit for you in getting that additional qualification in a Bachelor of Science and with Business Administration combined?

Chaundria Singleton

Well, when I started the Business Administration bachelor's degree, I thought to myself, wow, I am learning so much when it comes to business law, business management, accounting, I mean just those little things, international business, like there were certain courses that I took within it that I was like, wow, this is really helpful. Uh, it just, it was the the book knowledge of it was very helpful to me on a business level, I would say so that that was one of the positives to it And it challenged me in a different way than I've been challenged in a long time because I hadn't been in school, you know, for a while, twenty plus years, I had my education a long time ago. So that was a different challenge. Uh, but it's benefited my business, networking, just relationships in business that I learned from having other businesses, but this was different.

Michele Ong

Different. It fills in the gaps that you hadn't picked up while you were doing the work.

Chaundria Singleton

Right, that's a good way to put It it abs it absolutely does fill in the gaps.

The misconceptions of radiologic technology and medical imaging as a career.

Michele Ong

Amazing. So in terms of, I guess, being part of the hustle, you mentioned in your mission that you want to let everyone know that medical imaging and radiation therapy isn't a side hustle in health care. I hadn't been aware that people thought it was a side hustle. So how did that kind of preconception or misconception arise?

Chaundria Singleton

Well, from some of the comments I would get on social media, uh, you know people can be kind of cruel on social media, you know, the keyboard warriors, uh, so and even those in healthcare. I remember I was on a live with a doctor, uh, social media doctor, big deal and the shock on his face when I said that I went to Emory University School of Medicine's medical imaging program and he literally turned his face up and I don't think he knew his face was doing that and he said for radiology? I think he thought I was confused like maybe she thinks she's a radiologist and I said yes, medical imaging, actually my degree is in medical imaging and he was like and you're not a radiologist, right? I said no, I'm not a radiologist. But it baffles me how many people in healthcare don't know that schools of medicine graduate more than doctors. They have doctorate programs, they have physician assistant programs, they have biology degrees, they have medical imaging degrees, so not just MDs. So that part of it was that that just came to me because the thought that people have a side hustle is it's not a real business. It's not a real career. That's just your side hustle, you have a real job somewhere else. And how

Michele Ong

do they think you acquire this knowledge?

Chaundria Singleton

People really don't. We you will see some of the things people make videos and some of them work in healthcare that we sit back in MRI and we just drink out of our, our tumblers or we just sit back and listen to music because I think when people come to our departments who work in healthcare, they see us sitting down in some modalities, not all or they see us with maybe 12 patients for the day in radiation therapy but what they don't see is all the behind the scenes work of geometry, trigonometry, algebra, calculus, how to figure out how to get each one of those 12 patients in an eight hour period, make sure we radiate them the right way, make sure they're lined up on the table. I mean, I don't take anybody's job lightly. I think everybody is a master at what they do for a reason. There is a reason no one pays me to paint their house. There is a reason no one pays me to lay tile. I paint and I can lay tile but that is not what I do. And so for me really educating people because of the comments that I get of people saying, it's a dead end career working in radiology, all you can do is x rays, all you can do is CT or MRI.

Michele Ong

They think you're just operating software.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah, they think we just sit back and technicians and we just work on machines. No, we use machines to diagnose and treat.

Michele Ong

They're your tool, they are not your occupation.

Chaundria Singleton

And we actually people don't understand what I put in IVs, I floated through a hospital doing IVs, not even doing imaging. That's how many skills we have in addition to imaging, we have to do IVs, we inject contracts, we have to go to school for pharmacology, just like nurses, maybe not learn to the depth that they do of pharmacology but we have pharmacology and I was at dinner once with a friend, a nurse, I have a lot of nurse friends and a lot of nurse family members but it just goes to show why I made that comment was we were at dinner and she said they let you guys inject contrast? Yeah, who else is going to do it? I can't believe they let you guys do that. I said what do you mean let? Trained. Went to school the same amount, we, she and I both have associate's degrees. We both, I said I went to school the same amount of time as you, but you didn't take pharmacology. I said I did take pharmacology. I actually did because we have to know what this patient's going through or what's happening in their body, how is it going to react to this contrast? Their diabetic medication, is it going to be affected by this contrast that I give them. There was a time when certain diabetic medications could not be taken within a period of time and we had to know which one because you have to understand chemistry, body chemistry, certain things going on with people's body, how they're going to react. You have to know when you're doing MRIs, I mean whether you're working on pediatrics, I remember working in pediatrics and adult patients and my first time working in peds and doing a neonate. I thought something was wrong with the baby's brain because it was so full of water. Whereas in adults their brains don't look like that on MRI and I was thinking oh no, I called the radiologist, you got to look at this scan and he's like that's just a regular neo a neonate's brain is different from a toddler's brain on an MRI scan. I'm gonna tell you it's just you have to really understand body anatomy pathology chemistry makeup of every stage of a person's life because when they go to geriatric stage they don't have that much water in their brain. So it turns out black on some people's brain. You're thinking is something wrong with my machine? What do I need to tweak on a machine as far as the the phase, the field, the frequency, how much kv, how much no, it's the patient's body habitus and so that's for me is helping people to understand that we are not some side medical profession that you can go six weeks and learn how to shoot x rays on somebody. No, you go to college and you have to, have continuing education we have to do every year and some people every 10. I've been doing it so long where I'm not in that category that I have to do it every ten years, but every year, every two years I have to recertify every two years and get more continuing education or else I lose my certification and in some states you lose your license. So it is definitely not some easy people say what should I go for, what's easiest? Think I I'll go for radiology, it's easier. Easier than what? It's like, I don't understand it. So, I thought when I thought of that, not a side hustle in healthcare, people think of hustles, side hustles as it doesn't really make you money, it's not really your real career.

Michele Ong

Hobby.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah, it's a hobby, not much effort is needed for it or put into it. No, radiology brings in big bucks than most besides cardiology and a few others, radiology is up there on how much hospitals make. When they wanna make money, they come to imaging.

Michele Ong

Yep. Definitely. Like, it is needed everywhere. I can't imagine why you would think that it's not able to be used as or be able to be crafted as a full career.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah. I just think people don't know and it's out of lack of knowledge and because we haven't shown up as medical imaging professionals much, because we do feel we're always in, we never really seen, we come in and we're out, we're in and we're out or we're in a basement of MRI. Most people don't really come to our departments, patients do, but people in healthcare don't really come to our departments. They don't realise that we're the ones in a trauma While the patients are, you know, getting the CPR stuff, we still got to take an x-ray, get the right angles, because if you're too close, if you angle it too much, you could make somebody's clavicle seem like they're too far up or too far down, which will have a bad reading and a doctor could think something is dislocated that's not dislocated you just didn't angle it correctly. Like you got to understand all the little nuances that we do even on the basic diagnostic x-ray not the the other levels, but just starting a basic diagnostic x-ray. There's a lot you gotta know.

A Couple of Rad Techs.

Michele Ong

Yep. Absolutely. And I guess this is one of the reasons why you started your podcast, A Couple of Rad Techs.

Chaundria Singleton

Yes. It's really I I wanted to do something different because as we were in that cohort together and one of the things Maddie asked me was how many radiology podcasts are out there? And I'm like, well, they're all mostly done by a radiologist. He's like, exactly. That you're coming from a different space and you can talk from your years of experience career wise, professional wise, what patients should expect, uh, what you didn't know about radiology when you got into it, you know, I can really relate to people about that. I had no clue what it was. So imagine patients coming in talking about they're going get contrast or get injected with dye and this machine is huge and it feels like a coffin, you know, that's, that's a lot to digest or people coming into the profession and hearing good things, bad things, they never even know what it is. I want to be that source of information for new people coming into the profession who are thinking about it or already in school for it. I also want to be the type of podcast that teaches those within our profession that you didn't make a bad choice. Don't let social media fool you into thinking that oh I should have went to school for another healthcare profession that's more popular, I would have more options. No, I'm going to show you as an example, I haven't even explored all the options that were that probably were available to me, but I sure have knocked down a lot more than most people and I want people to see that look if little me with an associate's degree can do it, you know, with fear but desire and the ability to say you know what at least I can try it and I was able to try it and look now I'm able to have a podcast, I'm able to do this for twenty plus years and I still scan, I have my scrubs on, I still scan, I love patients, But I also do other things all from a radiology background.

Michele Ong

And, you know, I I love that the podcast doesn't just cover the topics for those who are considering the profession or already in it. But you also have all this information for the people who will have to interact with it in their lives. And it demystifies a lot of the processes around what happens to us because we're often kind of subjected to it, but we don't always understand how it works. And even, you know, mainstream media, television, all of that stuff doesn't really cover anything more than what you said. You're singing behind glass looking at a screen. And that's pretty much the public perception of how it works from a popular culture perspective.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah.

Michele Ong

So, you know, you you said that Maddie helped encourage you down that path to talk about more than just the direct topics associated within industry. But is this also something that you experienced with your interactions with patients as a tech?

Patient advocacy and safety.

Chaundria Singleton

Oh, yeah. Every time a patient gets up, they're like, I got a question. Why does this thing make so much noise? Or why does it take so long? Or why did my body jerk when this sequence happened in MRI? Maybe a loud sequence happened and they feel like some kind of twitch or jerk or they want to know is it why did it take so long my x-ray took two seconds last time and this took thirty minutes so I always seem to give a lesson or something or you get patients like today I had several patients that didn't want to change out of their clothes from home and put on a gown from the hospital. I have to educate them, explain to them this is for your safety, that magnet does not turn off and not only does it pull things, it can burn you And that's one of my biggest things is making sure I educate people in simple terms, terms that just regular people are going to understand that normal folks every day would say, oh, I get that, that makes sense. It doesn't need to be over people's heads so you could sound so smart and you could seem intellectual, people just need to just be told it can burn you, it can pull this out of you or when it pulls out it can hit me and that's what I tell some of my patients I'm like look if you bring something in this room I'm standing between you and a scanner and the scanner wants it so it's going to hit me and hurt me you're going to be fine and they usually laugh at it say well I don't want to hurt you you know you have to find ways and that's what I try to do is when my patients maybe present upset that they have to fill this form out again they just filled it out sixty days ago when they came for an MRI why can't I just look in their chart Because for your safety, I got to make sure verbally that you understand what I'm asking. So you don't get in here and say, oops, I forgot I got a pacemaker. And which does happen. Does happen. So that's those are some of the things you know, people just want to know they're curious. They're very curious about it.

Michele Ong

And all of this information just only empowers them to be able to advocate for their own health when they need to as well.

Chaundria Singleton

Exactly, and I think that's important. You, you just said something really, really important, because there was a big accident that recently happened in New York where the gentleman went into the MRI scan room to help his wife sit up with the technologist and he had some kind of exercise weighted chain on and it pulled him towards the scanner and he unfortunately did not make it and they couldn't get him out and he didn't make it. And that goes to the point of educating people so they can advocate for themselves because after that, for a long time I didn't have any patients give me a problem about changing when they started over the news they were like I get it, I understand, you don't have to tell me anything and I remember one lady couldn't get a nose ring out and I used our metal detector wand to make sure it was safe and it was she was like no, I'm going to take it out. I don't want any problems. I have been told I shouldn't go in this thing with anything. And that's really important that people are comfortable and they understand why we do what we do or are asking them to do something because then the next next place they go when somebody doesn't make them change, they could say, well, wait a minute. The last time I got an MRI, they told me why I should change. I'm gonna go ahead and change.

Michele Ong

That awareness and that sense of being able to make that personal choice and being able to make these decisions to look after yourselves and the people who are trying to look after you.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah. Yeah. Because it's a team effort. Patients, technologists, and other health care professionals working together, because it's important that we educate nurses and doctors. I get doctors that call and say I got a patient just came in the ER, can they get they have a pacemaker, can they get an MRI? No, even though we do scan, we have MRI compatible, they're not safe because nothing that you weren't born with is not safe, it's compatible. So it's been tested in research under certain parameters like on a three Tesla and my scanner might be a 1.5 so it's been tested on a three Tesla with this implant that you can be scanned feet first for thirty minutes without any contraindication. That's pretty much what it's saying without any problems or you cannot. So, are certain conditions we have to follow with every implant and if we don't know what's in you, we cannot scan you and there are certain hospitals that do not scan even compatible MRI pacemakers because you need a cardiology team there you just got to be very careful even with the ones you can turn off and every hospital is not equipped to do that. So that's why I say it has to be communication and understanding the education of doctors, nurses that just because you work in this hospital and you think you know something about imaging, MRI, we are the professionals and it's up to us to educate you and keep you and the patients all safe.

Michele Ong

You have to take precautions and those precautions aren't going to be trivial. And as you said, we're gonna create new teams of people who are needed to be able to be on hand in case anything happens. And, you know, it's already hard enough as it is. There are shortages in health care and all those other areas to be able to make things happen on a normal basis. Yeah.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah. We have a large shortage in medical imaging, and that is gonna grow even more.

Inspiring the next generation with "Rachel the Radiographer".

Michele Ong

So now that you're thinking about the pipeline, you're also trying to approach it from a kid level with communicating how or what radiology is to children. And recently or earlier this year, you published a book I was gonna say Rachel the Rad Tech's like no. Rachel's a radiographer. So why why focus an audience so young?

Chaundria Singleton

Because, you know, for me I'll tell you this quick story. I actually used to get imaging studies as a kid growing up because I had IBS. I thought they were nurses. I never knew that they were radiologic technologists until I went to school for radiology and I went and said hey, used to get those exams done. You mean they weren't nurses? And I feel like a lot of people that come in my DMs and say, I've got all of this school debt, I went to school for this and I can't find a job. If I would have had your TikTok or had your LinkedIn and followed you, I would have probably saved myself a lot of time and a lot of money. I just feel like people should have all the options presented to them early on. And I think more people would be able to make more well rounded decisions. I'm not going to say better decisions, but more well rounded decisions because when you have all the evidence presented to you, you can make a more fair decision, one that is more beneficial. But when you only have bits and pieces or what is fair to you, that's all you know. And then you say, I don't want to be a doctor. I don't want to be a nurse. I don't want to be a lawyer. What else is there? And then you go into a field that is quick and easy, but you can't find a job and it costs you $100,000 now you're in debt. So that's why for me starting with young people, and I have inspired so many of my friends kids to be in medical imaging. Like I have my own little case study of people that are medical imaging professionals now and their parents are like so happy that their kids can take care of themselves in their early 20s. I mean, I'm not a parent, but if I was, I would, I look at my nieces and nephews and the biggest thing to me is you got to be able to take care of yourself. You can go live your dream and do whatever you want to do. But if you can be able to pay your bills, while you live life and enjoy life, that is fantastic. And then enjoy what you do. Our profession has so much flexibility that I feel young people should know about it. So many pathways in medical imaging. And when I do career days, the teachers are like, you guys do all of that? Like the teachers are so shocked and like, yeah, that's why we need educators and guidance counselors to understand that these are some of the things you should be putting in front of the children when they're trying to test and determine what careers they're good at. Are they good at science? Are they good at math? Do they do well with people? Do they work well in groups? Well, this profession is another option for them to test into and see how well they do, or to put in front of them. And that's one of the reasons why I created Rachel the Radiographer.

Michele Ong

It's awesome. I I love that it gives people another idea of what kind of role models they can have in the world. And we're still, I think, quite stuck in the way that we do perceive STEM and the careers that are available. And we put the subjects in big buckets that don't really give us an understanding of what it means or what range there is to be able to explore. As you said, you know, as we've discussed already, it's doctors or nurses or lawyers. We have a lot of primary positions that really don't encompass what we can do in these fields. And even amongst nurses, because I've spoken with nurses as well who have been also trying to convince people that nursing is STEM even though it very obviously is. Right. And, you know, they're saying even with the nursing, it's not just ward nursing. They've got all sorts of other specialisations available. Just the same thing with your own degree, where it's a two two year associate, but then you can go on and specialise or, you know, focus in specific areas. The same thing happens in all these other areas of health care that people aren't aware of. And they are not necessarily aware of unless they're in the environment or, you know, actually are able to go in and dig into these spaces and say, so who else do you work with? What else do they do? What other ways can we kind of assist? Because they're not just people with side hustles.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah. Yeah. And I really I think people are really believing more so because when I break down the different sciences, I did a video, a short form video on how medical imaging fits in the M in STEM fits with radiology and medical imaging. We do data and measurements, we do statistical data, we do geometry, trigonometry, algebra, physics equations, like and it can be different modalities even to the one that's maybe the least bone density. We have to measure bone loss on a machine, we have to measure hip every year that person comes back, have to use the machine and calculations to the machine helps us now with AI more but you still have to understand geometry, you have to do equations to make sure you measure that bone loss and report it to the radiologists who then does their own measurements but your calculations as a technologist and how you square up that patient with the machine, it falls in the you know, mathematics plays a big part in what we do science, the technology as well, uh, definitely are huge in medical imaging and I just look forward to creating more content, you know, this year educating people and hopefully soon more professions, especially healthcare professions will be recognised within the STEM umbrella.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. And in some cases, health with nursing, the recognition also gives professionals more opportunities for things like grants, further education, associations, and accreditation certifications. It just opens up so many doors when people finally realise that this is what this field is, and this is what you can do with it.

Chaundria Singleton

And imagine how that would fix the shortages of healthcare because some people go into other fields because they want to be part of engineering, they want to feel like a part of STEM but no one's telling them that this healthcare profession is a STEM avenue. My husband works with the gentleman, he's in school to be a medical doctor. That's what people don't understand too. Parts, everything is a stepping stone too for some people, you know, like I told you earlier, we have our own radiologist assistants. Just people go to school for physician assistant. Our radiology assistant program is a master level program. So you may start an associate's degree radiology, get to your bachelor's, and then you go take your master's in radiologist assistant. Now you're in there doing procedures like putting in feeding tubes. You know these are things that doctors do and people only attribute them to either a physician's assistant level can do that. It's a master program, master degree level program. What is the difference with us? We just have our own doctors in medical imaging. I think that's so cool too that we have our own doctors, radiologists, and we get to work side by side. I've always worked side by side with doctors from the beginning. I've sat with them for a week and learned things from radiologists. I just think it's really cool that we get to have our own doctors.

What advice would you give someone who wanted to do what you do, and what advice should they ignore?

Michele Ong

So leading nicely from that. If you wanted to give advice to someone who'd like to do what you do, and what advice they should ignore, what would

Chaundria Singleton

it Ignore people that tell you that there's no growth, no opportunities in medical imaging. Medical imaging has opened the door for many people that have been my mentors, been my managers. I have one manager I just saw at a conference that I spoke at, she I came off the stage and she came to me and said I remember when I hired you, I remember she hired me and I enjoyed working on her. She's now the operations manager of a huge children's hospital in a huge state, all from starting in medical imaging. She was an imaging technologist and she rose to be the operations director of a huge children's hospital. And I think if she had only listened to people that say you're just a tech, she would not be running a big hospital, a pediatric hospital at that and be well respected by all of her colleagues and looked up to by those of us in medical imaging as this is a standard, this is a possibility. And I would tell people to look at all your options. We have many pathways to enter medical imaging. If you are interested, go to your local hospital, your local imaging center, and see if you can float through just, you know, don't commit to anything, but see if you can float in there and get to know some technologists, you'd be pleasantly surprised at the different ways you can get into a profession that has so many options. Like I work one week out of a month and it depending on if it's for my company or not, I don't have to work every day. And in some days, just some months, I might work two days a month, the flexibility which frees me up if I want to have a full time job in addition to that. So you can can do things some days I do clinical apps and go somewhere for three days in another state and get to see another state. One time my husband did that and I did I went with him and got to stay in the hotel and relax and do some work while he went hospital and trained some nurses and doctors. It's just so many possibilities that I would love for people to give medical imaging a look and look at all sides of it, patient care and informatics IT side of it as well.

Michele Ong

It's funny that you're talking about the travel and the opportunities and the flexibility because I've spoken to a few other people in, you know, health care health care adjacent kind of roles lately, and they're saying, you know, it's so great that you can work from home. I can't you know, I I don't get the choice to of where I can work or who can work with. I have to come to this specific office every day. And I would love the flexibility of being able to have a different workspace or a different way of being able to conduct my day to day. And, you know, radiology does this. Like, this field gives you that ability to be able to expand and choose how you want to work, choose where you want to work, and how you want to apply that skill set because, you know, you can either do it directly or still doing imaging or in administrative as your mentor previously is now doing. So, yeah, the scope for CareerPods is endless.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah. Even people are scanning MRIs from home now. Like, have remote MRI scanning from home and you have three d so we do CAT scans, MRIs of cardiac stuff so what they do is reconstruct it. Well you have imaging technologists people with backgrounds like us who can work from home and all you do when they send those over from cardiac centers you reconstruct you clean them up, you make them pretty nice, and then you send them over to radiologists. So, we can work from home in even what people consider patient care roles, work from home now in some avenues. That's not a whole lot of jobs in that, of course, but they are possibilities.

Michele Ong

Yeah. And the fact that they are possibilities is great and it's just gonna keep getting better as the technology improves and evolves and, you know, the fact that it's accessible to do these scans from home, it it also speaks so much to the way that we can now allow people to enable their own health care in ways that they're comfortable with. And this is so cool.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah. It is. This is such a nice conversation. I love how you really, really promote women in STEM and recognise all the different avenues, Michelle. Thank you so much.

Michele Ong

And thank you too. It's been such a pleasure speaking with you today, and I've loved learning so much more about your occupation and, yeah, just how absolutely full STEM it is, and that's really exciting to me.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah.

How to find out more

Michele Ong

So if people would like to know more about what you do, where can they go?

Chaundria Singleton

Well, I am Chondria, but you can find me on all platforms as a couple of rad techs, r a d. We'll put that down there, but a couple of rad techs And you can find me at www.racheltheradiographer.com if you wanna learn more about my book. And my podcast, of course, is called A Couple of Rad Text Podcast.

Michele Ong

Amazing. And I highly recommend that people listen to it because it really covers such an incredible range of topics. And I've been learning a lot too. It's great.

Chaundria Singleton

Thank you. Thank you. Tell me any more you wanna know. I'll I'm I'm gearing up for 2026.

Michele Ong

Oh, I don't know. Like, because as you said, people know so little about this space, and we don't know what we don't know.

Chaundria Singleton

Right. Oh, yeah. That's true.

Michele Ong

Yeah. But, you know, I I wish we had more time because I wanna know more about how AI is actually facilitating improved outcomes, but also not taking away from your work because that is one of the conversations that people are having at the moment about being afraid that there's no real application for AI. It's like, yes, there are applications for AI. It's just that not a lot of people are doing

Chaundria Singleton

it. Right. Well, we definitely have to talk about it some more because I actually am getting ready to go to an AI center imaging event. So I'm going to learn some more about some new things that are going on. So I'll get as much information as I can because I'm still learning because it's just it's coming so fast.

Michele Ong

Yeah. And it's just gonna keep like even within six months, things are gonna change again. The landscape and the technology is going to advance so much further and improve all of the tools that we have to be able to facilitate medical and health care.

Chaundria Singleton

Yeah. It's it's exciting. Exciting for sure.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. Okay. Well, I've taken up another few evening.

Chaundria Singleton

No. This has been a great conversation.

Michele Ong

It has been. But, yeah, thank you so much for having this conversation. It is absolutely amazing. And I look forward to seeing what else you have to share on your podcast.

Chaundria Singleton

I look forward to being back. Hopefully, we I can bring back some more AI information to you. Thank you, Michelle. Thank

Michele Ong

you very much, and I hope you have an incredible evening.

Chaundria Singleton

You too.

Michele Ong

If you enjoyed this conversation, please let me know. Subscribe to the show, leave us a rating, and share this with your geeky or geek curious friends. You can also support Steam Powered on Patreon under Steam Powered Show. The link for which also be in the show notes. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.