Nuclear Medicine Lab

     Flat Stanley and Flat Stella were able to visit the nuclear medicine lab today.  The nuclear medicine lab is in the School of Health Professions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is used to train students wanting to become nuclear medicine technologists.  A nuclear medicine technologist performs diagnostic tests and therapies on patients using radioactive drugs.  Some of the tests include stress tests, bone scans, lung scans, thyroid uptakes, and many more.  A nuclear medicine technologist has to be board certified and usually works at the hospital or at an outpatient facility.

     In the lab, everyone must wear a lab coat, whole body badge, and a finger ring.  The lab coat protects a person from a radiation spill.  The whole body badge and finger ring is used to detect personal radiation exposure.  Flat Stanley and Flat Stella put on their lab coats, badges, and rings and participated in the radiation safety lab.  They learned about using time, distance, and shielding as a means to lower their radiation exposure.  Flat Stanley learned the basics of using a single channel analyzer and Flat Stella learned to operate a Geiger-Müller detector.  Both of these pieces of equipment detect radiation.  Flat Stanley and Flat Stella got to ride on the gamma camera.  Patients in nuclear medicine are usually scanned using a gamma camera like the one seen in the picture below.

     After learning about radiation safety in the lab, Flat Stanley and Flat Stella went out for pizza with the students.  Unfortunately it was raining outside so they had to use an umbrella.  After pizza, they got to sit in a class with the nuclear medicine students and learned about reading 12-lead EKG.  Except for the rain, Flat Stanley and Flat Stella had a great time learning about what a nuclear medicine technologist is all about.