Changing needs and patterns in radiologic technology. II. Suggestions for meeting the manpower problems in radiologic technology.

Abstract

Projections for the Future in Schools of Radiologic Technology Although hospitals now produce all but a fraction of one per cent of radiologic technologists in the country, there is already a shift toward degree programs, particularly those being developed in junior colleges which have tripled since 1957 and now number nearly 1,000. Understandably, many of these colleges are becoming heavily involved with career or occupational programs in the allied health fields, including radiologic technology. The hospitals, faced with escalating costs of rendering patient care, are coming to the opinion that educational programs, especially in nursing and to a lesser extent in the technological fields allied to medicine, should no longer be subsidized by the patient's dollar and that financing should be assumed by the public through technical schools, colleges, and universities even though the hospitals continue to provide the practicum. Since many hospital schools have encountered difficulty in recruiting a competent faculty, it has been found that, by banding together a group of hospitals with a junior college, a curriculum may be organized under a more able teaching staff than was possible in the individual hospital schools. Under such a plan students gain the advantage of obtaining a general education on a college level and of learning a profession at the same time. The hard facts, however, are that until such a time as publicly supported educational institutions are able to take over the responsibility for providing didactic instruction in the majority of schools of radiologic technology the hospital-based schools must be continued and supported, or there will be a disastrous falling-off in numbers of graduates. At the moment the only federal support available is for degree programs, and even this is of a limited nature. Public support of non-degree programs is desperately needed, particularly in rural areas and in communities where colleges have not as yet been developed. The junior college affiliated programs should be of sufficient length, breadth, and depth so that students will receive a sound academic experience. Many of the degree-offering schools have recognized the desirability of providing general educational courses of academic soundness; all too many are planning programs which have little to offer beyond what is provided in the hospital-based schools and are often skimping on the practicum as well as on the academic program. Students enrolled in such schools will frequently end up with neither a sound general education nor with adequate professional training, thus defeating the main purposes of a college- affiliated program. The colleges must provide at least sixty credit hours, comprising approximately nine hundred and sixty actual hours of instruction. Between the college and the affiliated hospital schools, there must be a minimum of four hundred clock hours of instruction as listed in the Basic Minimum Curriculum of an approved school of radiologic technology (1–2).