Brandi Larsen, BS, RDMS, RVT

When I first started as an x-ray tech, I had a group of women who were at different stages in life they were older than me. I always tell them that they raised me professionally. They were so influential in my life, not only as a career, but as a wife and a mom. They really helped me grow a lot in my early age, so I attribute a lot of who I am professionally to those women.

The best career advice I've received is that if you think you know it all, you don't. Medicine has a way of humbling you really quick. You can never assume you know everything in this field.

Don't forget to take care of yourself first, both physically and mentally, because the medical field is hard. It's a rough field - it's high stress and at times it can be very, very demanding. You have to be ready to handle the job, so if you're not physically and mentally fit, then it's going to be even harder for you. Also, make sure you stand up for yourself. This is not the old medicine like it used to be - this is the new medicine now, and you can absolutely stand up for yourself and for your skill level and your education levels. Don't be intimidated. Be professional, but make sure that you don't let people walk all over you, because they will if they think they can.

Working for Siemens Healthineers, the opportunities are endless. That's one of the reasons why I moved to this position - it gives me the chance to move up into different parts of the company, so it's pretty much endless there. As for challenges, I think AI is a challenge that's really important to address. It's a good thing, but I think it's also very challenging in the fact that we really have to be careful in how we're handling that. Especially in radiology, there's so much that the human element is needed, so I think AI is one of the challenges that we're going to really run into a lot in the future.

My faith is a big one, and I think it's really helped me handle difficult situations - because you get to know your patients pretty well sometimes, and they don't always make it. So my faith has helped me to handle that really well. I also think having integrity with every patient, no matter who they are, is crucial. Patients are always coming at you scared because you're giving them a medical exam, so everybody is usually scared to some level. Just being able to put them at ease and really being able to talk them through the exam, no matter what age they are, and just meeting them where they're at really helps to make everybody comfortable and helps the exam to go well.