Every CT leader knows the 6:45 AM text...
"Can't make it in today."
And just like that, your best tech pulls a double, the ED backs up, and the outpatient schedule starts sliding before the first patient checks in.
You already know the shortage. You live it every shift. What gets less attention is what it does to the team that stays:
- Your strongest techs carry the hardest cases and the newest staff at the same time.
- Protocols drift because nobody has time to keep everyone scanning the same way.
- Training ended at go-live, and the team filled the gaps with workarounds.
- Repeats, callbacks, and dose creep quietly eat the scanner time you need most.
Then the tired tech leaves for a travel contract, and the cycle starts again.
You cannot hire your way out of that. You can make the team you already have stronger, faster, and more consistent, so the people who stay want to stay.
That is the work I do. I started at the CT console, spent 25+ years in imaging, and now help established CT teams and their leaders standardize protocols, build training that sticks, and win back scanner time. I work alongside your physicist and chief of radiology, and we measure the results.
If you run a short-staffed, tired CT department, let's talk.