Interventional Nurse Experience

Hello, my name is Jan; I'm a staff nurse in the radiology department. After I qualified as an RGN (Registered General Nurse) I worked on a surgical ward for two years. Quite a few of the patients on the ward had operations for circulation problems and went down to the radiology department for angiograms. At that time I wasn't even very sure what a radiologist was, or what actually happened during an angiogram. But I did know that I was interested in looking at patients with circulation problems. So I got a job in the radiology department looking after people having angiograms and really enjoyed it.

I went on with my training and now I have a qualification in Radiology Nursing. This means that I have expertise in radiology procedures and nursing radiology patients. So when a patient comes for investigations I can help make it easy for them, check their medical history, check their blood results are OK and that it's safe to go on with the angiogram. I also stay with the patient, taking vital sign observations (blood pressure, pulse) at regular intervals and generally providing reassurance. When the angiogram is finished I make sure that the patient is ready to go back to the ward: that they have all their belongings and that a nurse on the ward knows what happened during the angiogram.