SHARE Member Spotlights: Rich Leufstedt, Radiologic Technologist

RICH LEUFSTEDT

DIAGNOSTIC RADIOLOGY TECHNOLOGIST & SHARE REP, UNIVERSITY CAMPUS, 4/27/20

At University, we’re a Level-One Trauma Center. We can see anything, and we usually do. Now, things blur together, and I lose track of the days. It’s chest X-Ray after chest X-Ray after chest X-Ray all day long. We’re almost entirely seeing presumed-positive COVID patients. With all of the infection control procedures, those scans that usually take five minutes now take twenty. It’s a grind.

I really appreciate that other Technologists are coming in to help the Diagnostic Techs, like the people from Mammography who are working as Radiology Assistants right now. We can really use more relief. There’s no admin leave for the X-Ray Techs. Even if we’re out sick with non-COVID symptoms, it’s impossible to have a restful day because Employee Health has to follow up our symptoms. We feel burnt out.

I worry about the back load that’s coming, too – where are the patients that we usually scan? What's happening that we don’t know about?

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Coming home at the end of the day it’s a scary routine to try to leave all the germs outside my home and get cleaned up. I do this job because I want to help. But would I have gone into this career twenty years ago if I had known that I’d be on the front lines like this one day, with these odds of bringing home a potentially deadly disease to my family?

I have faith. Every morning I see the sunrise and think, “We’ve got this.” But still, It’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.