Radiographers' salaries 'fall behind skills' in high-tech career

By CATHERINE MASTERS

The telephone rings, rousing Lisa Earle from her sleep. The young radiographer stumbles out of bed and heads back in to work, possibly her sixth callout of the night.

Whether it is a heart attack, injury from a car crash, a sudden blood clot or a head injury that has gone suddenly downhill, Ms Earle's work will be crucial in diagnosing the problem and establishing treatment for the patient.

She and around 80 other Auckland District Health Board radiographers, now in the middle of a four-day strike, say there have been rapid technological advances in their work in the past two decades and their pay has simply not kept up with their skills.

Twenty-six-year-old Ms Earle trained at Unitec for three years to gain her bachelor of health science (medical imaging) degree.

She studied anatomy, radiation physics, radiographic equipment and imaging.

She began work on a basic salary of $31,000, while paying off a $20,000 loan.

Now, five years later, she earns a basic salary of $38,000, topped up by the extra $2.50 an hour she gets to be on call.

She will earn an extra $3000 a year when she reaches the top rate of $41,000 - the amount earned by her colleagues Jocelyn Avery and Heather Gunn, both 51.

Ms Avery trained in 1970, when the training happened on the job and when technology that is now mainstream was unheard of.

"I never thought that at 51 I would be getting out of bed in the middle of the night responding to a call in order to earn a decent wage. Honestly, I didn't."

The three women said they had to undertake postgraduate study in their own time - and usually at their own expense - just to keep up with the leaps in technology.

Though x-rays have been around for more than 100 years, other technology has advanced rapidly in the past two decades.

Radiographers now routinely perform MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans - procedures without radiation that detect soft-tissue abnormalities in all areas of the body.

Computer tomography scans, also known as CT scans and which show cross-sections of the body, are commonplace. They can detect some cancers and are used to detect internal bleeding, brain injuries and fractures in trauma cases.

Angiography gives images of blood vessels, of blood flow and blood clots. This technology can show arteries in the brain and detect tumours and aneurisms.

The radiographers' union says angiography has increased threefold over the past 10 years and CT scans have doubled.

Radiographers used to perform mainly basic imaging but now they put tubes into people, blow up balloons so they can break blood clots, insert drugs and take specimens from anywhere in the body.

"There isn't a cavity or an organ, quite frankly, that the radiographers don't get into these days," said union secretary Dr Deborah Powell.

The women said that since April, when the health board brought in a computerised radiography system, they had also had to learn even more skills.

They do not mind - it's a varied and exciting job and they love it.

But it is also highly skilled and they believe the pay should keep up with the skills it demands.

The general manager of clinical support, Fiona Ritsma, said the radiographers' contract included a provision to advance people along and beyond the automatic pay scale, if they gained academic and clinical expertise.

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