Let’s just say this strip springs from the well of personal ultrasound experience and leave it at that.
NEW VOTING INCENTIVE: PATRIOTIC PHOEBE!!!
So it’s early July, and we’re all in the mood for flag-waving, so I thought it was time to celebrate the birth of everyone’s favorite country with a little bit of patriotic cheesecake! Courtesy of Phoebe!
This voting incentive is no longer available by voting, but you can purchase the pic in the STORE! It’s only one buck for five incentive pics! YAY!
American medicine ain’t much better as my friends have found out. Obstetrics isn’t one of those highly overpaid speciaties that attracts the best and brightest looking to buy a new Porshe every six months. Most of the tests are insurance CYA. Eat healthy and get your folic acid levels high enough in the first trimester or your baby is toast was the issue in three first prenancies. Despite all the tests. Second run smarts triumphed over western medicine, women’s bodies been doing it for untold millenia quite successfully if given the chance.
I’m happy for the medical community’s presence, given the fact that BEFORE its presence, the leading cause of mortality in women was childbirth. That said, it’s easy to want to kill them sometimes.
Hmmm. A few years ago — and I’m sorry I don’t have a link — I read a first-person account from someone whose technician tried to tell him he was just fine. If he’d followed the technician’s advice, he would have died. So your cartoon technician knows what she’s doing. (Although I can’t speak for the ominous sigh. She’s probably thinking about her own credit issues, for all we know.)
It’s a rule that does make sense, for sure. But both my wife and I have had bad experiences with the silent yet non-verbally expressive ultrasound technicians, and it’s a little harrowing.
Radiologist technicians have never been able to give diagnoses… my mom has a story about the first time I really did break a bone after several trips to the ER with false alarms. Mom was like, “Okay, we’ve gotten the X-ray, are you feeling better now?” and the nurse is smirking because she can see the fracture on the film, but can’t say anything.
I injured my knee, and my brother said “You have to put weight on it or it will seize up”, and the GP said the same thing, then the radiologist took the X-ray and said, “For God’s sake, get off that” Turned out I’d broken my kneecap, and I then had it removed. This was back in the 70s, mind.
That does sound a little medieval in method. I’m hoping they’ve come up with better methods in the ensuing decades.
Only an MD (Medical Deity) can offer a diagnosis or treatment plan from medical imaging. While the Ultrasound tech would know what the images show, it would be a professional violation to voice an opinion.
P.S. they are called technologists, not technicians. Sort of like calling you a teachers aide rather than a teacher.
Technologist? Why, that sounds like Star Trek techno-babble to me. I likes me the wrong word I’m more familiar with. And yes, there is wisdom in the ways of the medical gods, though that wisdom often results in frustrating scenarios.
Though I have to say that this comic, beyond any others, caused the most confusion and debate amongst readers, because it turns out that the standards for this sort of thing aren’t consistent the world over. Most American and Canadian readers said this was a familiar experience, but elsewhere? At least one reader reported that in her country, you weren’t allowed to operate an ultrasound lab without a doctor present at all times. Still others reported that their techs would and could freely discuss what they saw with the patient. Sort of makes me wish I didn’t even make this comic, but I did it to reflect my own (numerous) run-ins with the ultrasound lab.
No, don’t regret this strip. It’s interesting for us not North Americans, at least me, to see how different things are handled so differently in other countries.
In Germany for instance (where I live) it’s the doctor who does the ultrasound. And you get feedback on whatever shows up immediately.
The German method makes sense, I’d say. This North American approach is a broken one that (I’m guessing) is a system created to save money.
Patriotic Phoebe?
Awww… I was half hoping from the thumbnail that it was Carmen Sandiego Phoebe.
In the world of highly technical medical terminology there’s a word for blinking with one eye. It’s called winking. Unfortunately the woman administering the scan for pregnant chicks wouldn’t know that as she’s not a doctor…..And Canadian.
Little known fact: up in Canada, they call winking ‘quinkling’.
Okay, now your not even pretending to speak English. Yer just makin $hit up.
Yeah, and those other pommie bastiges call “whining” “whinging” with an extraneous “g” — what is up with that?
We don’t have the ‘g’ in Canada. That much I can assure you of.
I’ve had a lot of ultra sounds. I prefer it wen the technician doesn’t have an opinion.
Well, sometimes its nice to have a little bit of a heads up. I am firmly of the opinion that the techs know way more than the doctors most of the time.