Pioneering Excellence in Diagnostic Imaging with Nathan Smith from Imaging Diversified

Episode Overview

Episode Topic: In this episode of Skeleton Crew – The Rad Tech Show, we delve into the realm of Functional Imaging in Radiology, with Nathan Smith from Imaging Diversified, exploring its pivotal role in enhancing healthcare through advanced diagnostic techniques. Our discussion centers on the transformative impact this technology has on patient care, emphasizing the precision and efficiency it brings to modern medical practices. The conversation unravels how Functional Imaging in Radiology serves as a cornerstone in the ever-evolving field of radiological sciences, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in medical diagnostics and treatment planning.

Lessons You’ll Learn: Listeners will gain invaluable insights into the intricacies of Functional Imaging in Radiology, understanding its crucial contribution to accurate diagnoses and personalized healthcare. The episode enlightens you on the latest advancements and practical applications, offering a comprehensive look at how these imaging techniques are revolutionizing the industry. You’ll learn about the challenges and triumphs in the field, the importance of continual learning, and the future prospects that Functional Imaging in Radiology holds for medical professionals and patients alike.

About Our Guests: Nathan Smith, the visionary CEO of Imaging Diversified, joins us to share his expert knowledge and experiences in the field of Functional Imaging in Radiology. With a rich background in biotechnology and a passion for enhancing radiological practices, Nathan discusses how his company is pioneering innovative solutions and training programs that empower technologists and improve patient outcomes. His insights into the industry’s future, combined with his hands-on experience, make for an enlightening discussion on the significant impact of functional imaging technologies.

Topics Covered: Throughout the episode, we cover a wide array of topics related to Functional Imaging in Radiology, from the basic principles and technologies that underpin the field to the latest trends shaping its future. We discuss the critical role of education and training in the advancement of radiology, the significance of technology in improving diagnostic accuracy, and how innovative companies like Imaging Diversified are leading the charge in this domain. The conversation also touches on the broader implications of functional imaging for healthcare systems, including its potential to enhance rural and remote medical services, and the importance of collaboration and innovation in driving the field forward.

Our Guest: Nathan Smith- Influential Excellence on Functional Imaging in Radiology

Episode Transcript

Nathan Smith: It seems like we’re the third largest healthcare group of doctors, and nurses in us just by sheer number, but it seems to me that we’re probably the most disorganized and not collected together, and that’s in every single state. And it’s crazy because you look at it, is it a cost? Well, they average out most states about 30 bucks a year. So we’re talking about what, under three bucks a month to join your society, so what can the society do for me? I’m like, well, you know leader, it’s not what they can do for you, it’s more like, how can you help benefit your society. What we can do together is powerful. We can take stuff like societies and a big number, we can start offering services, we can start looking at rural areas together. We can start teaching, we can hold workshops. It’s a lot of things that we could do if we work together.

Jennifer Callahan: Welcome to the Skeleton-Crew. I’m your host, Jen Callahan, a technologist with ten-plus years of experience. In each episode, we will explore the fast-paced, ever-changing, and suburbs completely crazy field of radiology. We will speak to technologists from all different modalities about their careers and education, the educators and leaders who are shaping the field today, and the business executives whose innovations are paving the future of radiology. This episode is brought to you by xraytechnicianschools.com. If you’re considering a career in X-ray, visit xraytechnicianschools.com to explore schools and to get honest information on career paths, salaries, and degree options. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Skeleton-Crew. I’m your host, Jen Callahan. I have a great guest with me today. His name is Nathan Smith. He is the CEO and co-founder of a company called Imaging Diversified. Then he’s also in the process of starting up another company called Scepter, we’re going to take a glance a little bit later, but we’re going to get started by talking about Imaging Diversified. So Nathan, thanks for being with me today.

Nathan Smith: Thanks for having me, Jen.

Jennifer Callahan: My pleasure. Let’s start there with Imaging Diversified. Just give us a basis of what the company is and what you’re doing with it.

Nathan Smith: Awesome. Imaging Diversified was founded on biotech. I’m a technologist by heart. So it came out of the need for applications. Funny stories, I got applications, and I received them. Everyone teaches a little bit different. That application training I got, I didn’t feel like what was the best. Had another application screening that happened to me with a team and I ended up going behind and was asked like, hey, can we build the protocols and go through that? So I’m like, man, that one wasn’t great. Then I had another one. These were all different manufacturers. It wasn’t the same manufacturers, same company, same OEM. Finally, one day my wife was just like, hey, every time it seems like you guys get apps, training, or whatever, it seems like you’re being asked to go do the same job. So she said, you ever thought about just doing it yourself? And I was like some, yeah, I had got the training that I needed. I just said, hey, next time I got asked, I was like, listen, I’m going to come into apps. I didn’t know how much to charge. I reached out to a colleague who did it, pretty much freelance, and I was like, hey man, how much should we charge? Went from there. When I started, mostly with third-party companies. So that need for training, that need for expertise is there, and the need for showing technologies how to work the systems properly is there. Other than that, we’re a whole bunch of button pushers. If not right, you get some things and just knowing where to go and how to make the changes is very important. Just sharing your knowledge and I didn’t think I knew as much as I knew until I had those training and felt like, man, I know more than this person. But that’s by over time and experience and just asking for more and learning more. So Imaging Diversified came about with me just saying, hey, I need some help. And I said, hey, it has to be more people that have that work-life balance that may do apps in the past and they just can’t travel. Maybe they have kids now, or maybe they have to take care of an older parent or something like that where they can still do it maybe only twice a week, or maybe only four times a month. But they can’t go every week back to back for the year anymore. But they still have the same expertise, they still have the training.

Nathan Smith: I wanted to create a hub where experienced technologists, ones that sit in their field at their specific facility are the go-to. They’re the ones that build your protocols. They are your leads. They do all the training for the new techs. They go in and change all the different systems to one protocol. They’re the ones that talk to the radiologists to get the change. You have the techs or app specialists who have retired from the field or just can’t do it anymore that are sitting out there. So I wanted to say, hey, listen, here goes a company where you don’t have to stop working at your other job. You can still educate. No difference between going to a conference and talking, or no difference between going to a school and talking about what we do. You can use this company as a catapult to get you in front of some people who need your help. Maybe they want to learn how to do cardiac. Maybe they want to learn how to do prostate imaging. Breast imaging. It’s a big one that some techs maybe know 20 years, but if you’re not exposed, you don’t know how to do it. We could take those people and get them to those people. Then we are transferring the knowledge that increases us as technologists, our skill level, and our education level. It makes it rise just a little bit more. And that means those people that may be in a rural hospital setting that has no one to call, no one to pick up the phone, have the interrogatory for the first time and say, we didn’t want to do. I have never done it. I don’t know what to do, haven’t built a protocol. So who do they call if they don’t have OEM, where they have service through, or something like that? Sometimes I found that I didn’t know, or the techs didn’t know that they had, that they could pick up the phone and call them. So with this, we’ve been able to find people and then do that globally. What we want to do is wherever the need may be, I don’t care if it’s in Alaska, we don’t care if it’s in Cuba, we don’t care if it’s Jamaica, Hawaii, UK, we don’t care where it is.

Nathan Smith: We want to find the people and have them come in. So of course people do this on their own. We have freelancers independent. What I wanted to do is everyone can make what they want to make for the most part, but we want to make it more restructure, to make it more streamlined so we can utilize our services better. We probably were talking before, like, people want to make more money. Everyone wants to make the highest dollar amount possible, but sometimes that doesn’t match up. You match up by asking too much because then the people who need you can’t afford you. You have to find a happy medium. What I’ve done is a system and created a kind of a company with the help of my co-founder, John Zayac. And we keep molding, we keep restructuring and trying to make it fit more of the real world life situations. So I always consider this a tech company, we are the employees that own it, and we always take in ideas and different things because, without the people that work in it, we wouldn’t have a company. We’re not selling any products, we’re selling ourselves as the industry leaders, and the knowledge that we can go out and give. That’s what started it, we did this.

Nathan Smith: Coming up on five years in August, and it started small with just a handful of us with the idea, let’s do this together, and let’s just get more concrete with the name. We all had our own like LLC, our independence, so I’m like, let’s get a name that can come together. So “Imaging”, then “Diversified” was meaning different modalities, for each modality. We can look at every modality, Ultrasound, PET, MRI, X-ray, and every modality you can think of. If we can find an expert in that field who is willing to teach someone else, we can utilize them, pay them for their time, and then pay them for their travel. So they don’t have to worry about anything else, and they don’t have to worry about trying to do it on their own and not getting paid for four months, which when I started, that’s what happened to me. People said, hey, we’ll use you and then like, oh yeah, we’ll pay you when we pay you. Then it’s like, oh no. Let’s make sure that they understand it’s a partnership and these are real people who are going out and spending their time. We’re going to make sure they get paid for their time. With that, I think we have more reputation for being good, we have a team that we try our best to keep teaching. Third-party companies can count on us. OEMs, if they want to utilize us, can count on us too, and we will continue the training and education in-house and try to make sure we stay up to the industry standards as well.

Jennifer Callahan: You’re talking about traveling and the amount of time sometimes that you might be an expert or you have experience in applications, but you just don’t have the ability to spend four days traveling. There’s some leniency there with your companies, what you’re saying. Right?

Nathan Smith: Right. So what we do, we’ll get requests that may say, hey, we need two days, someone in Florida, and we may get a request to say, hey, we need five days in Oklahoma inside our team, what I think is cool is you have a team of, let’s say, 20 people in MRI, and then you look at it and what fits you and say, hey, that one fits me. It’s almost like looking at a job board that forever changes. And you say, oh, I like that job. Let me go do it. Two days, they’ll knock it out, come home, you’re done, you get paid for it. It’s pretty cool because, in that period, you make more than an average technologist at that time, you get to show someone and teach. So you’re not doing the scanning, we don’t scan at all, but we’re just teaching a person how to utilize their system, how to use their system properly, and sometimes how to do things that they probably never thought of or didn’t know they could do. When we leave, we’re always hoping that we leave behind a smarter technologist. So when it’s going to utilize what they learn and be able to apply it and enhance the diagnostic imaging by doing so, that’s the goal at the end of the day.

Jennifer Callahan: Do you find that the technologists that you’re going to help out, might have already they’re experienced technologists, but maybe they’re coming to a new facility working with equipment that they haven’t worked with before?

Nathan Smith: What I will say is I’ll give it about a half and a half. Most of the time we’re going because the facility is receiving a loaner mobile while they get a brand new scanner, or we’re coming in because they got a brand new scanner or use a scanner. When they’re getting that, usually, it’s not what they’ve been working on. What’s the hardest is of course, when they move from one manufacturer to another. We find text that 20 years in the game, been doing it, can scan probably with their eyes closed on this scanner. Then they get hit with this manufacturer and they’re like, I don’t know what you’re doing, what is that? For instance, on a Phillips scanner, you can set your TR almost like an auto TR on an earlier stage of software. On GE and Siemens, you can’t do an auto TR until later on, when it does it. So when you take someone that’s been 10, 15 years on a scanner, that was back in 2005 or 2004, and they’re just now getting another scanner, and it may not be the brand new scanner, it may be a used one. They may not understand TR and you’re like, whoa, how are you doing this for 20 years? But you don’t know your TR ranges for T2 and T1 and proton density for MRI or CT. They may be able to have a scanner that does certain things or is set up to auto, and then I got a scanner that auto records out there and they manually do it and they’re like, whoa, what’s going on? Why does it automatically do this? Kind of one of those things where you’re like, well, why don’t you know? Or how don’t you know how to change the KVP mask? How don’t you know how to fix your artifacts for these different things, or set your technique? Back in the day, we had to set our technique x-ray. So now everything is auto. So what if that went out? They wouldn’t know what to do. We find a little bit of both. We find that we get new texts, which honestly, I’ll be honest with you, they’re easier to train a lot of times because they don’t have anything that they’re set on, like, this is the way I’ve been doing it, this is the way it is, I don’t want to learn anything new. We find that the newer techs are usually okay and they receive the knowledge better and they’re ready to write stuff down. Older texts are like, I don’t need to write anything down, I’m gonna just remember that, and then they’ll call you and be like, hey, how did you do that again? But at the end of the day, almost everyone that we train is receptive. You do find that rare breed ones that don’t want to hear anything. They just aren’t going to accept the change. They don’t want to do it, and they’re just going to be steadfast. I think sometimes the person in us right, that the anxious, the anxiety where you just get reserved, where you react a certain way to change.

Jennifer Callahan: So the technologists then that you have that are coming to work with you and that are going out to these sites, are you looking for specific people who have experience in, say, like GE equipment, Siemens equipment, someone who has experience with the majority of what’s out there?

Nathan Smith: What we look for is someone who has experience and at least one manufacturer, it can be any other manufacturer, it can Toshiba, Hitachi, GE, or Siemens. We’ve taken people that only have less experience than one manufacturer, one system with one software. On the MRI side, it’s just Siemens is free and the software level is b19. And that’s all. That’s all they know. But they know everything it is to know about that. So that person, any job, anywhere that they’re willing to travel, that comes up for that specific scanner to go on it, and believe it or not, we have some popular ones for CT and MRI. Sometimes that’s all you need. You just have one. Now, it does help. We have people that have come and they had work experience at the manufacturers where they’ve been there for a couple of years. So they have more software-level experience through a certain time point for them. They can do multiples. And we also have on our staff where we have people that are trained in MRI and CT, for example, and it may be like GE and Siemens. So they have experience on both sides, on both modalities, and that allows them to go do training on that. It may not be every scanner, but they may only have like two and two. But it’s enough that they can pick what they want when they want. Usually, we want at least three years of experience.

Nathan Smith: Sometimes I say five, but three years of experience at least. I’ve found that I’ve dropped that a little bit because if you work in a trauma hospital on a specific scanner, and in this day and age, sometimes you get hit with the duties. If you show yourself to understand, you get hit with the duties at the three months, like, all right, you’re going to be building protocols. All We need you to do this. So you get thrown in it and then every day you’re dealing with it. So sometimes their one-year experience for one person is more valuable than the experience of someone ten years who may have been doing only the MSC and SPI and that’s it. They haven’t done anything trauma, nothing with contrast. And that’s all they got experienced with. The person with one year is doing cardiac functional imaging. They’re doing everything you can think of under the sun, trauma cases, they’re scanning pacemakers and MRI pacemakers. They’re going through and checking off stuff where the other person got more years of experience, but just not more experience, if that makes sense. But go through that and have a conversation. I always say our hiring process is not like a hiring process. Our process is “Are you capable?” Process. We never want to put someone out there that is not ready. We don’t want to put someone in front of you trying to show you that new room that you got, and you ask some questions and you’re like, they don’t know, they don’t know it.

Nathan Smith: And more, because you got experience with the room that you had like, well, I can figure this out. I don’t want you. We want people that can at least answer the questions and some more. Now, sometimes we do have people like if someone came to train me, for example, I may be more experienced than this specialist that I’m getting, and that happens. So we know sometimes this case is where you’ll go somewhere. And no matter how much experience you have, it may be someone bright. They did all their due diligence, they read everything about that scanner, so they know more. Sometimes I don’t like the situation where they try to stump the trainer. That’s not what we’re there for. I try to make it straight up. I’m a very transparent person and I’m very hey, listen, I’m not here to be stumped. I’m here to help. So if you know about the scanner, you can use it fully and functionally. Even though I’m here, my job is almost done because we just want to make sure you can scan to optimal, and we want to bring people in who are comfortable with teaching people. So that’s mainly what we look for. But we don’t want to send them out in those kind of cases. We just want to send them out so we can make sure they’re helping other texts that need it.

Jennifer Callahan: Have you had anyone come across looking for employment who, in the past, has worked for an actual manufacturer who went out to do applications for them, like, say, they worked for Kodak or Siemens or something, and maybe they just don’t like the work of what it was like being an application, and maybe because your company is a little bit more flexible?

Nathan Smith: We currently have people on our team now that have worked for manufacturers. We want to make sure our relationships are good too with the OEMs. It’s not like we were taking people or anything like that, but we want to make it like, listen, they can still come work for you. It’s just now they can pretty much have a different work-life balance, maybe something that works more for them. But we do have people, some people that work for us work full time in this only, all they do is apps. Some people work part-time where they scan on the weekends or scan during the week, and they’re available to do this two days a week, and some people are only available on the weekends. And that’s okay too. So sometimes we get an axe, somebody says, hey, we only want to do apps on Saturday and Sunday because we don’t want to have any downtime. We don’t want to close the day on Monday through Friday. Let’s do it on the weekend, get our training done, and be ready to go Monday. So it works for some people that say, hey, I don’t have any availability, I’m only available on the weekends. They also have a place with us to offer it. Now, of course, they won’t have as many opportunities. But they’ll still have a place.

Nathan Smith: Then sometimes your experience limits your opportunities as well. But the people that come from the manufacturer, we welcome them in too, because they have the experience. The only difference between us is just the way we do some things, which is very similar. It’s just some things that you would do at an OEM that you wouldn’t do for us because we don’t have to worry about selling anything. We just go in and say, hey, this is how you can, this is how you do what you do, also these are the things that you have on this system that you can utilize, let me show these too. That’s cool. We have people like that take from their brains too. It’s an internal teaching for everyone. We do that inside our internal chats where we’ll just throw stuff out there. It’s like, “Hey, I ran into this, what would you guys do?” Type of situation. So I think that’s cool just to see everyone’s input. I always call it a nerding out session, you look at it and you just get to nerd out with these people chiming in with these buttloads of experience and background.

Jennifer Callahan: You started your company, you’re coming up on five years or just about, but it was right before COVID. Did you hit, any roadblocks?

Nathan Smith: We went from being able to go wherever we wanted to, whenever we wanted to. Simply, I had a picture of one of our guys that he was the only person on the flight to Florida. He’s like, dude, it’s just me, the pilots and the stewardess. I was like, take a picture. He took a picture behind him and in front of him. He was the only person on the flight. Then we ran into the situation of being able to go into hospitals that got strict depending on what state you’re in. So I remember going to New York and one of the engineers or surgeons, people got turned away because they weren’t vaccinated and they were coming into work and I was coming in to do the apps. I was like, well, can I do what I need to do without what this guy’s getting sent home? It was crazy. We definitely slowed down. That’s when we were getting started, just being able to go into places and do the training because it’s person-to-person training and restrictions of how many people can come into a place as well. We still did it through that time, it was just limited. It was like wild, wild West and it was something else, something we’ll probably remember forever how it was in 2020, was interesting, to say the least.

Jennifer Callahan: Let’s switch over and let’s talk about your other journey that you’re going down, your new company that you’re getting off the ground, Scepter.

Nathan Smith: Everything, it seems to me comes to me to fulfill a need that I see. So Scepter, the whole concept and the whole background to that is with the Imaging Diversified, with my personal technologist role in the Atlanta area, because I’m in Atlanta, Georgia, in that area of pirating and just working for different people, trying my best to be the best technologist I can be, build a good reputation. Then, of course, meeting people and staying in contact with them. I get calls and they will say, hey, listen, we need someone next week for two days. Can you come, do it? I’m like, yeah, I actually can. And I’ll go work it. Then someone else and then someone else. And these are places I don’t work for. They started with places that I was in, I felt like seven different places at one time, but just being honest they can call me when they need to. What happened is at one point I had a conversation with the owner and said, hey, listen, I know you call me and I’m not available all the time to train people, I’m not here. But I have some texts that I know that I’m cool within this area that probably would do it. And I could shoot them a text, how much would you pay them? The question I started was, well, how much would they want? So my text went out, how much do you want? So this is the place, this is what they’re offering, this is the type of scanner, and this was MRI background. This is MRI work, so how much do you want? So I get the numbers from everybody. Then I send them all over and I say hey, these are the numbers from the different ones that can come. They say, okay, cool. Of course, they would choose the cheapest, That started it, and then I said, okay, well maybe we could start some type of system. It started with just a text and my phone and then a group text out. From there, I felt we could probably make this a little bit more streamlined and more structured, and on top of that, it’s me getting text all the time. I still have a family. It’s calls and texts like, hey, I need someone tomorrow. You got someone tomorrow or next week? We need two weeks here and two weeks there. So this is something we’ve been doing for like 3 to 4 years. We’ve been supplying applications specialists to work short term, less than two weeks. The reason is we don’t want them to be gone for a month because it’s not travel work. But if they’re going to come and you’re going to pay travelers a certain amount of money, then hey, let’s make sure we’re making something comparable.

Nathan Smith: Let’s not play on the same thing. You pay your regular tax, they’re coming in more of a stat ASAP type of situation. So let’s pay them a little bit more. So Scepter’s concept behind that is let’s utilize us, the technologists, to work you feel the radiographers, the professionals. And let’s connect with the hospitals’ imaging centers. No different than staffing agencies would. But we don’t want to impinge on the 13-week contract or the one-year contract. We don’t want to do that. We have recruiters out there. I’m cool with them. Let them keep doing their thing. We just want to make sure that the in-between time, that time they’re looking for someone for contract work, that gap of time that they’re struggling with because they’re down one tech for two weeks while they try to find someone, we want to help them out with that. It’s one of those things, it’s not a long commitment, it’s something that you can work quickly, come on back and get your money for it, but it allows you to stay in your radius, maybe 15-mile radius, maybe 20-mile radius that you can go make the same amount of money as a traveler would make. If you’re in Georgia and flew to California and flew to New York, you can make it around your area, maybe only drive 30 minutes or something like that.

Nathan Smith: And I’m pretty sure it’s other staffing companies that have some type of thing like that. But I always found that most of them are based on nurses. They’re based on that first, and then everybody else is Allied Health. You get all of us too. So it’s not a concentration on our profession, so to speak. So the company, right now, launching is we’ll have more communications out. We want to embody the text. I’m one of those people, just like I said, my image and diversified as a technologist’s own company, so to speak. I want this sector to be the same way. I want it to be led by the people like we, the community, are the leaders of it. We don’t want to take a lot of money where people are like, oh, they’re making a killing off of me. We want to make it very transparent where you can see like, this is the fee that came across, this is this, this is going to pay for the run, this application of this service. Because we’ll have to pay for people to run it. We want the technologists to make a little bit more than they make, we want the hospitals, and the imaging centers to pay a little bit less than they would pay for a 13-week contract.

Jennifer Callahan: So I think, that’s an amazing idea of what you have there, because there are technologists who are out there who necessarily don’t exactly want to travel because of the contract commitment, like you said, 13 weeks, 26 weeks, possibly a year, but still are looking for something extra, maybe in addition to what they’re already doing, or they might be in between jobs as well or something. So if you have people who are out there who are just like, we just need these two days covered or we need this, I think it works for both sides of the party of who is in need, people are both in need. Someone wants a little bit of work, these people need this work covered. It covers both sides of the tracks, definitely.

Nathan Smith: For us, if you’re part of the community, if you are a provider of imaging centers, a hospital, just be on a platform. It’s almost like a dating site. Just be on the platform. But you’re not cheating. You’re not cheating on anyone by being on a platform. You just. It’s Sunday, 7:00, someone just called out for Monday. Let me just make all my calls, let me just throw it out there, just put it out there. You never know who is all on Mondays and Tuesdays. That may be five minutes away from you. You just really never know. So I think the cool thing about it is I wanted to bring that together. Competition-wise and things like that, we had a lot of staffing agencies how it is now and today, how many job openings, I don’t think it hurts to have something else out there. I don’t think I’m going to be impinging on anyone’s field. I don’t think I’ll be impinging on anyone’s thing and staffing. But Scepter aka we have www.scepterstaffing.com, that’s where they can go. They can do the sign-ups. We are working on the website and things like that. Like I said, it’s employee-owned. So it’s my personal money, my co-founder, our personal money. Just trying to get the platform going with the concept that, hey, later on we can bring it back, but we are going to be looking for just investors, just people that say, hey, I believe in this, I think that’s going to be cool.

Nathan Smith: The staffing agency world is a $1 billion industry, so we’re getting into it, but not the full 13-week contract, stuff like that. We want to make sure that it’s a clear separation from that. So if they do, we love to partner with that. Or maybe down the road, we may have like a section for longer commitments and longer things. So we can still help the companies or the hospitals out there that need it. That’s funny too, because people ask me about remote scanning and just all these different technology advances and AI remote scanning and all of that still comes in together. Because if you think about you filling a shift from your room and you’re filling a shift like 12 hours away, let’s say it’s in like Australia and you’re at home and he’s like, oh, it’s overnight. So yeah, I’ll fill that shift and say, how are we going to pay you like 100 bucks a scan or 50 bucks an hour, whatever it may be, and you’re able to fill the shift and then you may say, oh, I feel another one like five minutes down the road tomorrow.

Nathan Smith: This gig work era that we’re in, that’s what we’re embodying. It’s like the gig stuff. So you can work here, maybe have something that’s truly committed on Friday, Saturday, or Thursday, Friday. And you can fill in, in these other things that really work for you, that you can still have your life. You never know, this may be your thing that you do. That’s why I think Uber is so cool and so important today. It gives people the flexibility. You don’t want people riding with you. Not a problem. Do the food service. Just pick up food and take it. So just having those different choices I think helps us in our field. I think it also helps the other companies that need it so they don’t have to close. You have people, your mom, my mom, or your cousins, or your kids that are scheduled and you get a call like, hey, we’re not going to be able to do you tomorrow. And they give you a reason. Who knows if that’s the right reason? But they’ll say, hey, we can’t, we gotta reschedule, your machine was down or whatever it may be. They may have just had no one there to do your scan. You never know.

Jennifer Callahan: To branch off of that, we were talking before we started recording about getting texts involved and the different communities that we have out there, and you were saying how you become active with the different rat societies within Atlanta. Do you want to share a little bit about what you’re doing with them?

Nathan Smith: Most definitely. So I volunteer for the Atlanta Society and Georgia Society. So Atlanta Society is more for the metro Atlanta area, and then we got Georgia Society encompasses all of Georgia. Then you have ASRT, which is the big society over most of the US. So if your state has one, most of the state has a society. But what we see is that, for instance, in Georgia, 11,000 registered texts by ART. In the two societies, we probably have a percentage of about 1%, somewhere around there, 1 to 3%. And I may be giving a lofty one to say 3% that is actually in a part, a member of the society and then active in it. What that means is it’s not even one out of ten. This means you may be at a place, a big healthcare facility, maybe a total where you may have like 100 of you guys or 150 or a health system 300, then probably maybe like three people, maybe part of the society for the state. If we’re asking for our society to be known, for us to get more money, for us to be able to do more things then our voice is not as strong if we don’t have as many people. You got nurses and things like that. They get stuff done, doctors, they get stuff done. It’s not because they are quote-unquote, doctors are quote-unquote.

Nathan Smith: It’s just because they show up that they have a voice. They’re not going to sit back and let someone else make the decisions for them. But the associations with the doctors and the orthopedists and the neurosurgeons and the nurses and things like they’re going to show up, they’re going to make sure that the states they’re not regulating something a certain way that’s going to take them out of a job or take money from them or anything like that, or they’re going to be there, they’re going to have a voice. They’re going to have someone at least sitting as a representative or something that they can use ours. It seems like we’re the third largest health care organization group, I should say, not organization group doctors, nurses, and us just by sheer number. But it seems to me that we’re probably the most disorganized and not collective together, and that’s in every single state. And it’s crazy because you look at it, is it a cost? Well, they averaged out most states about 30 bucks a year. So we’re talking about what, under three bucks, 2.99 a month to join your society. We’re looking at these small amounts of money a lot of them have where you get your SES. You get other things as well within those. So it’s okay. I’ve had someone tell me, so what can the society do for me? I have people tell me that I’m thinking like you’re a tech or if you’re a manager or a leader, I’m like, well, you’re the leader.

Nathan Smith: It’s not what they can do for you, it’s more like, how can you help benefit your society is my thought process. I know a lot of people like, well, what can I do for me? You bring your expertise and then let’s see what we can do together. What we can do together is powerful. We can take stuff like societies and a big number. We can start offering services. We can start looking at rural areas together. We can start teaching. We can hold workshops. It’s a lot of things that we could do if we work together. You have the same 50, the same 20, the same 60 year after year of the year. They’re going to hold it together. But the outgoing, let’s go into the city, let’s do these things. You’re going to need more numbers and the younger generation and there’s more people in general coming in younger and older generations. They just come in getting to society and using their skill set. So let’s say, for instance, you have a background in photography, but you’re a radiographer. That’s something you do as a hobby. Well, I’ll be well. You could definitely come work in this society, use your skills, and then that’s your way to give back. Like you’re like, hey, I’m using my skills. And also check me out. You can help.

Nathan Smith: You can do these things. Use your skills, use your hobbies, and be involved in something that you’re working on. It probably started in your career and it probably is going to end your career in, but you never were involved. It’s no different from PTA. Being involved in your high school or middle school or elementary school for your kids, your home making sure you know what’s going on in your neighborhoods. All these things that we do or we talk about and people will tell you straight up like, well, if you’re not going, you can’t really say nothing. So it’s no different from our society. I feel like I want more people to get involved. And personally, I work in the outreach part of it. So my job is to try to connect with more businesses and connect with more radiographers, and technologists, just to get them more involved, to try to figure out ways that appeal to them. And it’s hard. It’s harder than I thought it would be. I thought that when you find out about it because as soon as I found out we had one is, oh, I’m joining it right away. Why not? 35 bucks? I spend that eating out. It’s just that, I mean, in society, I know what’s going on. I can go sit at a meeting local to me and get credits. What are you talking about? It’s a win for me.

Jennifer Callahan: Everybody, this is Nathan Smith talking to us about being tech-involved and how important it is for us as technologists to be involved with each other, and then also to all the great things that he’s doing with his two companies that he’s founded. So, Nathan, thank you for being with me today. I appreciate it.

Nathan Smith: Thank you for having me. It was great. I loved talking to you.

Jennifer Callahan: All right, everybody. We’ll see you later. Make sure you check us out on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Leave us a review. Let us know what you’re thinking and we’ll see you next week. You’ve been listening to the Skeleton-Crew, brought to you by xraytech.org, the Rad Tech Career Resource. Join us on the next episode to explore the present and the future of the Rad Tech career and the field of radiology.