‘It fires up your passion for change’ – meet new SoR president Katie Thompson

I went on a college trip with my physics A-level group to the Science Museum in London and the SoR was there. They were doing a competition of some sort, and we got handed a lot of leaflets about radiography. When I got home, I was sifting through everything I’d accumulated on the day and I started reading about the profession.

Originally, I wanted to do something science related, and I was really interested in being a biomedical scientist. But the leaflets made radiography sound like a career I wanted to find out more about. I spoke to my parents, and my dad happened to know someone working at the local hospital, so I went for a work experience day to see what the X-ray department was like. After my visit, I thought: ‘Yeah, this is what I want to do. I want to be a radiographer.’

I liked the way you were involved with patient care, but you weren’t with your patients all the time. You were actually diagnosing to help find out what was wrong with them. I liked having that influence on patient care. It was a combination of being with patients but using technical, scientific equipment. You have the best of both worlds. You’re part of a patient’s journey, but using the equipment itself just drew me in. It called to me. I just knew it was the right career for me.

In 2018 I won Trainer of the Year for the South West region. I run training sessions with our obs/gynae doctors at the hospital to learn how to do early pregnancy scanning, and they nominated me for the award. Usually, other doctors get nominated. I was humbled to have been nominated in the first place, and I was honored to win it. I've been nominated again this year, but you can only win it once! I enjoy the training. I like to pass on what I know, what I can do to help other people. I really enjoy that part of the job.

The next generation will be better equipped radiographers than us because the equipment is changing so rapidly. I’ve been in this job for 30 years. What will the equipment be like in another 30? The radiographers of tomorrow will have completely adapted, again, and will be ready to embrace and renew their knowledge.

It’s important that we embrace our students and understand that we are in an evolving world. The way we were taught, and what we were taught, is not always relevant now. Good practice and good care is, but technology moves on. You have to be mindful of that when you’re passing on your knowledge. You should never compare your course with theirs, or your training with theirs, because it's a different time. Radiography moves on.

The SoR is our professional body and our union. The majority of our members like being part of the society because of the union side, but most won’t ever need the union. They will need the professional body side throughout their career, because that’s where we get our guidance from, our policies, procedures and best practice, and our opportunities to go on courses and get research grants.

It’s the professional body that works on raising our profile with the wider public, with our stakeholders. If you ask people what they want the SoR to do, most of the time, it will be value for money. But I want people to talk about radiographers. The SoR has been actively working on going into schools and colleges to raise the prospect of a career in radiography, being more involved with stories from departments across the country, and that’s made a big difference. But I think we as radiographers need to advocate for ourselves. If we’re talking about ourselves, other people will talk about us.

This year, I’d like to raise awareness again of our ‘Hello, my name is…’ campaign. Hello, my name is Katie, I’m a sonographer and I’ll be your healthcare professional. Or, hello, I’m a radiology nurse. You can highlight what you are to whoever you are helping. It is getting there. But we are the ones dealing with patients every day. If we want our patients to remember us, we need to give them a reason to remember us. They often do – but they might not remember we were radiographers. It’s really important we are using the terminology.

Our workforce needs to grow. Technology has moved on so much, and diagnosis and treatment is becoming a more talked-about topic. The government can spend as much money as it wants to on scanners but, at the end of the day, you need people to run them. 

Radiographers have been using and adapting to technology since the inception of the X-ray. I come from the era of wet developing, and now we’re in the digital era, soon to be moving into the AI era. Technology is always changing, and radiographers are very good at adapting to that. 

Changing how scanners work isn’t an issue, but the number of radiographers we’re training – that’s the area that needs to be focused on.

When I found out I’d been elected to become vice president, I was shocked. But also really honoured that people had taken the time to vote for me, because I was part of the first member vote for the president pathway. Previously, it came from the UK Council members, but I was part of the first year that it went out to the members. 

Then, it dawns on you that you’re going on a three-year journey with the members, and your career pathway is going to have a split focus for that time. You also realise what you really want to aspire to during that journey. I want to focus on celebrating radiographers who do their job really well every day. They may never get nominated for a big award, because they don’t think what they’re doing is groundbreaking. But actually, it is – turning up, giving good patient care, being an excellent radiographer, a teacher, running a support group or a journal club – all of that is groundbreaking.

I want to raise the profile for whatever level you are at. You are a really valued member and person in the world of radiography. Every level counts, and it’s been really nice this year that there’s been a lot of focus on our support workforce as well, because they are what glues us together. A lot of our support workers are now going into radiography careers!

For the last few years I’ve had less time to do things outside the SoR, but I have two dogs. Their names are Hugo and Archie, a springer spaniel and a lab-cross-cocker, respectively. They’re both completely mental for completely different reasons!

For about 12 years I took pole fitness classes, which I really enjoyed – great for meeting people. I did some shows and then I moved on to belly dancing. Now I do Ceroc, which has a bit of jive, a bit of salsa, a bit of samba – a mixture of different kinds of dances.

I’ve also got children, a son and daughter who are both adults. My daughter is going to university in September to study physiotherapy – she’s very much into sports.

Over the coming year, I hope you see the current SoR strategy become more widespread, so you hear more about what we’re doing and why on the workforce, career progression and sustainability. We need to show that. We want to retain our radiographers, and we want to be an attractive career for people to come into. I want more visibility of the SoR to the members, to show that we listen when they have questions and that we are taking action for them.

I also want to highlight sonography regulation. Sonographer is not a protected title, so most of us are regulated by what we trained as. I haven’t practised radiography for 19 years, but I’m registered as a Diagnostic Radiographer, not a sonographer. If we want to grow that workforce, registration will make the course more attractive. It also gives people more career opportunities once they become a sonographer, because you need to be registered to do any advanced practice. 

I just want us to start telling people who we are, what we do and why you should become a radiographer.