MRI Technologist Pay: Are You Getting Paid What You're Worth?

MRI Tech Salary: Are You Getting Paid What You're Worth?

Welcome to the A Couple of Rad Techs Podcast, where we explore the world of medical imaging and radiation therapy.

In today's episode, our host Chaundria Singleton opens up about her personal experience in the field, shedding light on the challenges faced by MRI techs when it comes to negotiating fair salaries. Chaundria reflects on a time when she settled for a shockingly low salary and delves into the reasons behind her decision, from the saturation of job opportunities in her area to personal responsibilities that impacted her choices. She also shares valuable insights on the importance of knowing one's worth and advocating for fair compensation in the workplace. Join us as we unpack Chaundria's journey and gain valuable perspectives on navigating career challenges in the world of radiologic technology.

We'll be discussing:

• MRI tech salaries
• Factors affecting MRI tech pay (experience, location, certifications)
• The current state of the MRI tech job market
• The value proposition of MRI techs in the healthcare system
• Strategies for MRI techs to negotiate for fair compensation
• Resources for MRI techs seeking salary information and career guidance

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MRI technologist, salary negotiation, low salary, professional worth, medical imaging, saturation in the field, multiple modalities, career advancement, toxic work environment, flexibility in work, value of experience, self-worth, networking, toxic job exhaustion, job satisfaction, career transitions, job interview, medical imaging professionalism, career achievements, research and preparation, professional value, healthcare industry, realistic worth, work ethic, rate negotiation, consulting, medical technology, patient care, fair compensation, job offers.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to A Couple of Rad Techs Podcast, where we bring you an inside look at the world of radiology from the unique perspective of a married couple of radiologic technologists. Together, we have over 30 years of experience in the field and are here to demystify the science of medical imaging. Radiology is the unsung hero of the medical field, providing doctors with crucial images and information that help diagnose and treat illnesses. Join us as we explore the latest techniques, technologies, and innovations in radiology and discover the vital role we play in the healthcare industry. So come along for the ride as we share our passion for radiology as a married couple.

Chaundria: 0:38

Welcome back to a Couple Of Rad Techs Podcast. My name is Chaundria and I am your host. Today's episode is a little different. I am here to talk about a topic that hits close to home for a lot of us, especially MRI techs and salary negotiation. The title of this podcast says it all MRI techs deserve better. Why I settled for a shockingly low salary. This podcast is not about me. I just got to tell my truth. Let's get into it. Thinking back to that particular situation, it stings. I'm just going to be honest. The field is demanding and we have to remember we're the ones running the scans, ensuring patient comfort and safety. We're dealing with complex machinery and often the ones calming anxious patients before a procedure and during a procedure. We have the education, the skills, the responsibility and yet way too often we get low balled on salary offers. I am not one to dwell on past mistakes. We all make them, but believe me, I settled for way less than I was worth at one particular MRI job that I could think of. Have I gotten paid less on other jobs? Yes, but I got something else out of it that benefited me. This was different though. I took this salary and it ate me up inside the entire time because I didn't want to take it. Stay tuned because I want to know, have you guys ever been in this position? And it's not always just as someone low balls you. It's how it's done. That's exactly why I wanted to do this episode because I did not network. I didn't have the network. I didn't have the people to have the conversations with, fellow techs. I didn't feel empowered, but this episode is to empower you, my fellow technologists to know your worth and to fight for it. Let's dissect why I settled. Maybe you've been there too. Maybe jobs were very scarce at the time. For me at this time when I took this particular job where I was not compensated fairly in my personal opinion for what I brought to the table. And there were, it was like saturated at this time in our field. Radiology, medical imaging goes through that. Every modality and specialty goes through that. That's why I'm a firm believer in knowing how to do more than one modality. Get you a few specialties, ones that can work together like I do CT, MRI, and diagnostic x ray. A little bit of mammo, just screening, nothing too out there with the mammo part. I'm not ARRT certified in mammo, but there are certain things in what I do, the modalities I chose, they work really well together. They overlap. Most places who have MRI have CT. Most places that have CT have MRI. You can get me to do both modalities versus two different technologists. And with my experience, it's not hard for me to be able to. Of course, I don't scan two scans at one time. That's impossible, but you're able to maneuver through the modalities of the specialties when you have that experience. And there are a few other things I'm going to talk about why I felt like I was not compensated well. Again, the saturation in the field at that time in the area I lived in. I lived in a big city at this time. I wasn't in a position to go travel and go take a travel position. There weren't many out there. They were very low as well. And at that time I had a sick parent. I could not be away from home very often and I was married. And I didn't want to be in another city for 13 weeks away from my husband. That's just, that's not what I signed up for. Not for me personally. The other reason why I settled was because I had a car note and I had to pay this car note. There was no other way for me to pay. And I'm not the kind of person that doesn't like to pay my bills. I'm sorry. I don't like to be late. I don't like to owe anybody. That's just me. I personally had certain responsibilities that I needed. Maybe it wasn't the same income I was used to. And I had just gotten out of a job to where that job sucked me dry emotionally and physically. It was one of the worst jobs I've ever had in my entire career. Absolutely horrible experience. Those three things alone kind of put me in a position where I feel like I did not really fight for my value and my worth. To be honest, now that I'm talking through this podcast and remembering the situation I had just gotten out of from a really horrible job that I didn't really know my worth at that time. And when I tell you I came from a job where I was sucked dry. I was sucked dry. And almost to a point where I truly did not know my value and my worth. That's what some jobs, toxic jobs can do to us technologists. And when you go to the next one, it puts you in a situation to where you'll take anything. You'll allow someone to convince you to take something that you know, you deserve much more and better. You'd even take a job that's probably just as toxic, if not more than the job you came from. And that's what happened to me. I didn't do the research either. And I did not talk to other techs. And I had a few techs that I could have talked to. I didn't, I was in such a bad place coming from that job that I did not reach out to my resources. Knowledge is power. We didn't have podcasts like this back then to listen to. We didn't have social media like we do now to be able to see a technologist in Canada, see a technologist in the West Coast, on the East Coast, in the North, in the Midwest, in the South and say, wow, Hey, they're going through the same thing I'm going through or the content they're making is pretty funny. Yeah, I've been there. I've gone through those things and now we do. And I think that is so powerful to our profession. And that's why you see more people wanting to become radiologic technologists. Those of us who have been in a period of time, we have devalued ourselves sometimes and we've settled for shockingly low salaries and some of us are still settling for shockingly low salaries. I was just having a conversation today with a coworker that finally left. We worked together years ago, probably about almost close to 20 years ago. We met at a contract job that I was going to when I first started contracting myself out. And it was a group of girls, I really was never in their circle and she and I wound up connecting and staying because none of them were registered in MR. I had paid to go to Bill Faulkner's class and that is one of the reasons why I passed on my third try. That's a whole nother podcast in itself. But we connected and I actually passed on my information to her. She passed it around, they all passed their registry and that's how we kind of connected through the years. We were just having a conversation about really valuing yourself and removing yourself from toxic situations in employment and giving yourself a little break in between because many times we leave a toxic job and then we go to the next job and we take that toxic ness with us and the bitterness and the tiredness, the exhaustion. And we take it somewhere that may have been a really good place, but because we hadn't given ourself the break and the grace that we need to give ourselves. And a lot of times financially, we just don't have that luxury, right? We work because we have to. Most people don't have the luxury of if they remove themselves out of a toxic work environment. Now I can give myself a break. I can take a nice long month long vacation or a two week vacation and just relax. Most people got to go from one job to the next. You don't have time for a breather, but if you do, I really think, it's helpful because one thing she said to me was she didn't realize how tired she was like one day after she left a toxic job She just slept. And she was missing the schedule, but she realized she had peace. And instead of going straight to a full time job from there, which she applied and didn't get any at the time, she was like, I just did a PRN and I actually had more flexibility, more freedom, more peace. And I made more money. She was like, I really should have done this a long time ago. And she's in no hurry to get another full time job. And she's like, I wish that I would have thought about just doing a couple PRNs here and there. And Hey, that pays my bills. I still have flexibility. When I want off, I can just not schedule myself. I'm making the money that I feel like I deserve. And I'm kind of just in and out kind of thing. And that's one of the things I definitely encourage is you have to negotiate, you have to kind of get uncomfortable and sometimes you just got to leave the job you've been at and go to another place. I remember I left the company I had been at for a while. I was always PRN there. Always kept me working, but I wanted to move into another modality. I wanted to move from CT to MRI. They were like, you're so good here at CT. We just love you at CT. You're great at CT. I'm like, yeah, but I can also do other things and I want to learn other things. They just had every excuse. And I had no complaints with the company, but my only problem was I didn't feel like they valued me because here I'm trying to level up in my modalities, but yet they don't want me to, and they're not allowing me to, which means I can't make more money. I'm capped. That made me have to make some really hard uncomfortable choices. And I chose to leave. I resigned, I was able to learn MRI elsewhere at another facility that paid me less. But this is where I get to about. If you make less, what are you getting? Is it beneficial for you? For me, it was beneficial for me to take a pay cut to go learn another modality at another place I was doing CT, PRN at, they said, Hey, we'll let you learn. MRI. Learned it. Immediately got a raise because once I passed my registry, well, even before I passed my registry, they gave me the title of MRI Technologist. Of course it was like a level one. But after that I passed my registry. I got another MRI job somewhere else, which helped me to gain my confidence and my skills. I commanded more money over there. I could see like my salary going up and up and up. If I would have stayed in my comfort zone at a place where I had no problems, but I wasn't able to advance, I would have been low balling myself. That's where I say, sometimes it's okay to go back in order to get what you need or just kind of stay where you are. If that's going to work out for you short term. Now I would not have stayed in a situation where I went somewhere, make less money to learn a modality for a long time. I eventually went on and left that facility and then they got bought out by the hospital that I went to. I wind up being like, in their float pool that they were just starting and the pay was like crazy. I think my pay went up like six or eight bucks something like that and you could take as many hospitals as you wanted. I took six. They only let you do three really on paper, but I did six because it gave me the ability to hone in my skills on all the different machines, all the different patient populations, because that makes a difference too in how you can increase your worth is being comfortable in every situation. One hospital I worked at they didn't scan any implants. I never really got that experience. When I floated over to this other hospital, they turned off people's pacemakers. The rep was there. They did everything. Spinal stimulators. Everything. I got experience doing all of those things. They did breast and they had a technologist that was really good at it. I did breast, but I didn't really learn. It was kind of on the job. When I got with her and then I paid for my own course to learn how to really understand mammography and became nationally certified in mammography. That was a game changer for MRI breast for me. And those are ways for me that I feel like I have been able to command my worth and know my worth, is by investing in myself as well. When you can not only show on paper, your worth, but you can actually go in and physically show your worth by doing the job with very little, if any assistance, that makes a world of difference. There are places where they hire a lot of new techs and they need seasoned techs who can work independently and help train newer techs. And they're willing to pay you for that. But there was this again, one time where that just didn't happen because I was so hard up for a job, the situation in a city was really, really low. And after doing all of these things, I forgot my worth and didn't do my research. I did not connect with other technologists. And that's when I sat in this gentleman's office. I had talked to a friend and they connected me with another friend. And this friend referred me for this job. Job was so far from my house. Like the traffic was crazy. It was so far from my house, but again, I had a car payment. I had bills. This friend didn't want to make them look bad at all. I'm the kind, I'll take the loss. So I don't create a bad situation for somebody else who put their neck on the line for me. I wind up sitting in this gentleman's office and from the get go, when I sat in his office, I just felt this really negative vibe from him and it wasn't mean it just was prove yourself to me like he was just sitting back in a chair like I was supposed to put on a show right then and there and it just was really uncomfortable I didn't feel a friendly vibe or a it wasn't it didn't really feel a good vibe at all. He looked at my resume and he slams the resume down and he says I don't pay any of my techs anything but 30 an hour. I don't even know if I was offended at that, but I was more offended at the toss of my resume, towards his desk, and the kick back at his desk, and cross his arms and legs at me like, Who do you think you are? And I was just like, Who does he think he is? I wanted to get up and walk out of that interview because I thought it was very disrespectful to us as professionals when as technologists, we are the ones that do the exams. We are the ones that have the education and the experience to not only press the button, but we know the parameters. We know how to care for a patient when they have reactions. We know so much when it comes to MRI and you're talking to technologists who have years of experience. Sitting behind a desk, never having done radiology his self, not a tech at all. They were a business person. And that was the problem for me. It was the response. I wasn't happy about the salary, but I didn't wanna make my friend look bad. He had put his neck on the line for me for this job. He could have warned me though, how the guy was.'Cause I was like, that is so rude. I don't care if somebody came in asking me for a hundred dollars an hour if I was a manager. I would never respond to someone like that because who am I to tell somebody what they're worth? Who am I to demean someone in even my body language that they're not worth what they say they feel they're worth. And that's what it was for me. I don't know about you all. It's sometimes the delivery and how we're treated as professionals in this industry. And I feel like we need to understand our worth and our value I just actually got off the phone with someone for something else that has nothing to do with radiology. And they were interviewing me, all the things that I've done in, pretty much my working career. And I forgot about some of those things. Like I started out cutting grass in my neighborhood at 13, because I needed to make some money to go to Six Flags with my friends. And my mom was like, look, my money goes towards your school clothes and your other stuff and your hair. She was a single parent. And then I got my own little hair salon in my mom's garage. She renovated the garage and gave me my own hair salon cause I had so many clients. I drove trucks before I went to school for radiology for FedEx. I have a CDO to this day. I will not be letting my CDO go. You never know when you might need to go back and drive some trucks. I had my own cleaning business. I sold real estate. I used to flip houses. There are so many things that many of us have done. Household, we run households. We manage families and those things may not pertain to the field of radiology, but in a way they do influence how successful we are at the job we're doing presently. I would love for you all to set a timer on your phone or your alarm clock, whatever, just maybe three minutes. And I want you to list as many things as you can list that you have accomplished in your life, in your work career, because that's going to make you really see on paper. Because when I got off that call, I went to my husband, I said, wow, I forgot I did some of those things and it was impressive to me. And it spoke to me as my work ethic, the type of person I am, the kind of work that I've done and the lives I've impacted and gave me a view of how much I am worth. And that's what I want each of you to get out of this podcast. Really know your worth, know the value you bring to whatever situation you're in, but especially as technologists in the medical imaging and radiation therapy profession, you could be a diagnostic technologist. You're valuable. Don't say I'm just a tech. Don't let anyone tell you I don't pay my techs. No one owns you. No one can tell you what you're worth. Now, corporations do have caps on what they pay. You can choose to negotiate, take it or leave. You have that option. There are many things out there that you can do with your skills. I have podcasts on informatics. I have podcasts on clinical applications. There are so many things, patient care and non patient care that we can do. I have friends in radiology who are school nurses. They work at their school as school nurses. We have medical background and experience. Do not put yourself in a bubble. Radiology and medical imaging opens up a ton of doors that allows you to use these skills and increase your worth in your career. You just need to take the time to list them and realize for yourself what they are and value yourself. We value the shoes that we walk around in. We value the car that we drive every day. Let's value the work that we do. Do your research, be confident and be prepared to walk away. Don't undervalue yourself. That's the things I would end this podcast on. Look, MRI Techs, we are the backbone of the radiology department among other professions and specialties. But this particular podcast was to explain my experience of when I undervalued myself. Now, I did stay at that job because my friend put his neck on the line for me, referring me. And, that gentleman who interviewed me, it actually turned out they wind up having to use me for CT and MRI because it was only myself and the guy that referred me that knew how to do CT and MRI. And we both were very good at what we did. We took care of our patients, we were easy to work with others. He had no complaints for us. Well, get this. This is how things work in life, but especially in healthcare. There was a big conglomeration of hospitals that were going around buying up all of these imaging centers. They bought up this one. I was a contractor but they only offered two of the full time employees at this place a job at their hospital. This gentleman was not one of them. I was there for about a year. It was a long drive. I didn't feel like I got the salary I should have gotten, but I accepted it. That's my fault. But what I got from it was so much more valuable. I knew after that I would never ever devalue myself. And no one is ever in the place to value you because no one owns you. No one knows you. You know yourself, you know your work ethic and show up based on your worth. We have to be realistic about worth as well, but do your research and see what your area is charging. What you can command with skills that you have and show up that way. You know, if you feel like you're worth 50 an hour, show up 50 an hour. If you feel like you are worth 60 an hour, show up 60 an hour, if you feel like you're 30 an hour, but you're really worth 60 an hour, you're not going to be too happy with that in the end. Show up, command what you're worth, do the research, and rehearse how you're going to make an offer. And rehearse if they give you an offer that you're not happy with. Are you gonna counter? How are you gonna counter? I just did a story on my Instagram that if someone offered you a low amount, would you ghost them? Would you negotiate or would you just flat out say no? You guys go ahead and let me know what you would do, please, in the comments. Would you say no, would you negotiate or would you ghost them and just wouldn't respond? I definitely enjoyed this conversation. Let me know by please giving me more content ideas. I love having these conversations about my experience over the last 21 years in radiologic technology. It's been a wonderful experience. We do play a crucial role in patient care and we deserve fair compensation. So the next time you get a job offer, take a deep breath, know your worth and fight for that salary that reflects your skills and dedication.

22:44

And that's a wrap for this episode of a couple of rad techs podcast. We hope you enjoyed our discussion of the fascinating world of radiology and learn something new about the role we play in the healthcare industry. If you have any questions or topics that you love for us to cover, feel free to reach out and let us know what they are. And you guys, please, if you enjoyed this podcast or any of the other episodes, we want to hear what you think. Thought leave us a review. Mama's got to pay our bills. It helps. And until next time, stay tuned for more insightful and informative episodes of a couple of rad techs podcast.