The cardinal mistake many veterinary radiologists make is that they overestimate how many cases they can read in a day. This mistake manifests itself when inexperienced radiologists (who do not yet know their worth) or experienced radiologists (often trying to sign on a high volume account) agree to read cases for an unmanageably low reimbursement rate.

The mistake is made as radiologists rationalize “Hmmm…10¹ bucks does not seem like a lot to read a case but I can make this work. All I need to do is read more cases. I remember one day in my residency where I read like 80² cases. I can make this work. “

You might be able to read 80 cases in a day. One day. Once. The mistake many radiologists make is thinking that they can sustain that kind of production each and every day.

You are not a robot. You are a human being. The cards are stacked against you if you think you are going to work like a robot. You will get tired. You will burnout. Your ex-husband will flake and forget to bring the kid to baseball practice which will destroy your afternoon. Your significant other will body slam and chin butt you because you staring at the computer rather than them.

Inevitably you will start to dread your job and your productivity will plummet. Movie loops will start going off in your brain as you watch yourself doing anything but reading the GI series that just arrived in your list at 5:59PM. You will strike deals and remind yourself that things could be worse. You could be squeezing anal glands. You will tell yourself that “you can do this” as you mind wanders, you check your Facebook page for the third time in the hour, and you get nothing done.

But you are tough as nails and you will hammer out those last 4 cases rather than throwing in the towel and admitting defeat. The problem is that those last 4 cases will be a painful burden that you cannot bear every day. Those 4 cases take you five times as long to read as the first 4 of the day. Those are the cases where you will miss lesions. Those are the cases with crummy reports that you need to amend 5 minutes after they are complete because the vet has no idea what you are talking about.  Those are the cases that will damage your reputation because your reports are one sentence long. Those are the reports that will convince your clients that you do not care about them or your job forcing them to look elsewhere for assistance.

Pretending you are an automaton with the ability to read an ungodly number of cases each day will not result in happiness as a veterinary radiologist. Your job is to find the middle way.

Step 1 in finding happiness as a radiologist is understanding your limits and creating a reasonable long tem plan for success. This will require a good understanding of how many cases you can reasonably read in a day. If your eyes are bugging out of your head and you cannot talk without saying “period” at the end of your sentences, that is too many.  You should not feel like you have been hit by a truck at the end of each day. Your contact lenses should not be sticking to your eyelids.

Step 1 is finding your productivity number. Use that number to work back to a reasonable reimbursement per case. Doing things in reverse is the radiology equivalent of pushing shit uphill.

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1. Or whatever low reimbursement rate someone is trying to get you to read cases for

2. Or whatever unreasonably high number of cases you read on that dreadful day in your residency. This number will vary between radiologists. Some radiologists can do dozens of cases a day. Good for them. They are rock stars. Other radiologists might only be able to squeeze out a dozen a day. Good for them too. They are also rock stars. Slow readers but rock stars nonetheless. This is not a competition.