As a radiology tech, your day-to-day duties will vary, which means you’ll rarely have a boring day at work. Your exact schedule will depend on the place where you work, your specialty, your experience, and more. In general, though, your main duty is to use advanced technologies dealing with imaging to help diagnose and treat patients.

There are actually two different kinds of radiology techs. A radiology technician, also called radiographers, use x-ray machines to capture internal images of a patient. This job is as delicate as taking a picture with a manual camera, since the technician has to prepare the subject and set the machine to produce a picture with the right amount of detail and density. Radiology technologists, on the other hand, work with patients to produce images using different kinds of technology, including CT scanning and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

As a radiology tech, you can choose a specialty to learn more about a specific type of medical imaging. For example, OB/GYN sonographers take images of a fetus before birth and mammographers use special x-ray machines to produce internal images of the breast. You can also specialize by type of problem in some cases, as some larger facilities hire radiology techs that know about certain medical conditions or parts of the body, such as fractures, cardiology, or the brain.

Part of your job as a radiology tech is working with patients. You’ll need to prepare the patient, who may be nervous or in pain, for the exam, and this process requires a high level of responsibility, since improper preparation could be a safety issue. Jewelry needs to be removed, a medical history needs to be taken, and patients need to be prepped as to what to expect. Some types of imaging also require the radiology tech to prepare a mixture for the patient to drink before the procedure. Of course, along with the need for a strong attention to details, this all means that it is important for radiology techs to have good personal skills.

It is not the job of the radiology tech to actually diagnose diseases or other medical conditions, though you may want to pursue advanced education to become a diagnostic sonographer. As a radiology tech, though, doctors will order images, and then pick them up for interpretation. However, just because you can’t make a diagnosis doesn’t mean that you don’t need to know how to read and interpret images. A good radiology tech will understand the images they take, so that they know when more or better images are needed. This saves the doctors time and, in turn, could save a patient’s life.

Radiology techs must also take care of their equipment. Whether you work at a large hospital or a smaller facility, the machines you’ll be using for your job likely are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars – or more. Following proper procedures for maintenance and cleaning is an important part of the job every day.