Radiology seminar held at NPCC
National Park Community College hosted the Kettering Review Seminar for radiology students, including some from the college, this week to prepare them for their certification exams.
Peter Barger, radiologic technology program director at College of Nursing & Health Sciences at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau, and a seminar instructor for Kettering, taught the two- day seminar.
“Kettering is based out of Dayton, Ohio, and we provide graduates with education on how to pass their certification exams,” he said. “These students have to take a national certification exam with the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists.”
Barger said the seminar is strictly designed to prepare students for the exam.
“We aren’t here to teach them to be good radiographers because that is what the program does,” he said. “We come in and we reinforce many of the things the program has taught them over the last two years.”
Barger said the certification exam is “sort of like a nursing exam in that it’s a 200- something question test. They have to get a minimum score of 75 percent on it.”
“Studies show when somebody like us comes in here and does this kind of thing, we increase the scores of the students significantly because what we focus on is the material just on the test,” Barger said.
He said 24 students, mostly from NPCC, attended the seminars.
Barger, who lived in Garland County about 10 years ago when he worked for the former St. Joseph’s Mercy Health Center, said he enjoys returning to the area.
“The bonus for me ( of teaching the seminar) is I used to live in Arkansas in Hot Springs, and I get to come back to Hot Springs,” he said. “I love Hot Springs. I hated to move away, so I brought my wife, and we will spend a couple of days here visiting friends and our old house.”