An Interesting Career You May Not Have Heard of

An odd little squiggly line dances across a CRT Screen. To most of us this may be meaningless, but to the skilled eye of a member of the American Society of Electroneurodiagnostic Technologists, (ASET) it tells an interesting story. An electroneurodiagnostic technologist is a healthcare professional whose primary responsibility is to record the electrical activity of the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nervous system. And as a professional they work closely with physicians, and clinicians who provide direct patient care. The recordings are very important because they help in the diagnosis of diseases such as epilepsy, patients with tumors, patients also that have sleep disorders, nerve disorders and you can even find technologists in the operating room, there to record and monitor the pathways that are at risk during brain surgeries. Tim Stokes a Board member of the American Society of Electroneurodiagnostic Technologists explains a bit more about the profession. "The equipment that we use in our field collects and displays the different functions from different neurological areas of the brain, spinal cord, and different peripheral nerves. They modify and then store data and display them in ways that physicians can interpret them. There are many conditions of the nervous system that would change the normal findings; we deal a lot with seizure disorders, with epilepsy for example. There's also tumors, different peripheral conditions, carpal tunnel, diseases of the spinal cord as well. There's neurological conditions MS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, many different findings change the way the integrity of those systems are recorded and with experience physicians can recognize those and make those diagnosis's when they vary from the normal".

So there are several settings where an END Technologist can be found, sleep disorder centers are one example because they have specialized professional technologists who do nothing but help evaluate sleep disorders. Doctors often prescribe a visit to a sleep clinic to get to the root of a sleep disorder. There studies are performed by neurophysiology professionals many of who are Electroneurodiagnostic Technologists. "What we end up doing is getting as much information as we can so the doctor can make a clear cut diagnosis. We need to get the best information that we can based on our training based on our experience." Said Robert Wright of the Mease Sleep Disorder Center. "This has been a very good career choice for me. I do enjoy doing the work. It's very very interesting. There are a lot of different things, initially I didn't know about sleep and the different information that was out there on different processes and really how important sleep is to your daily life, your regular functioning and really your overall health, so that has been very interesting and continues to be." he added.

This is a profession about people who care about people and want to make a difference. For those that are interested in healthcare, but some of the more traditional medical professions are not appealing to them. "Probably the most important thing that I've been working with over the past 30 years that's helped me stay in this field is that we deal directly with the people. We deal with patients that are dependant and vulnerable and they come to us and the count on us to know what we're doing they expect us to have state of the art equipment and know our job but they go away remembering how they are treated and we're afforded the opportunity to spend quality time with our patients. You actually spend time getting a history on them applying the electrodes. You spend time performing the tests and you get to care for them and care about them. In many cases you see them time and time again as they come back for follow up studies and it's that human touch along with the technology that's been rewarding to me." Says Tim Stokes. In addition to sleep studies, there is growing demand for other testing procedures in this profession that is experiencing a shortage of qualified personnel.