Long alert!
Hi I'm also a diagnostic radiographer. NOT a therapy radiographer (different altogether but a guaranteed job!)
39/40 is nothing! I regularly assist students in their 50s! (Portsmouth uni). The great thing older students bring is maturity. We have to teach the 18-19 year olds how to actually communicate with another human being! Whereas with the older students, we can get on with teaching radiography.
P/T is very possible. My DGH has many what I call 'middle aged bags' inc me whom the dept rely on to inject a note of common sense, calm and maturity onto 'the shop floor'- and it's not that they're all very experienced, just 'grown up'! Whilst it is more common to do the full monty in terms of shifts/nights early on in your career then go P/T later (almost that 'baptism of fire thing you need to go through- you never forget your first single-handed multi trauma!!) I would imagine you could do limited hours. General GP and out-patient can be less stressful.
You can specialise in the following, really:
Accident and Emergency
Paediatrics (noooo!)
Interventional and fluoroscopy (barium studies, examination of arteries and veins AND fixing problems with a scrubbed radiologist: NB a radiologist is a specialist doctor in the feild)
CT (computerised tomography)
MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)
Theatre and Ward which tend to be off shoots of general radiography.
Breast screening (excellent for P/T!)
You need further study to do:
Ultrasound (a full-on year's one day contact a week diploma BUT a fast route to band 7 BUT you do wear the responsibility of your own reporting)
Nuclear Medicine (ditto? not sure)
Advanced breast screening
Image reporting (again, band 7)
You start at Band 5.
Interesting?
Well, I've been a rad for 25 years and I must say I thought it was the job I'd do before I 'found myself' but here I am! I do 19 hours a week doing CT and MRI scanning plus a bit of Sunday A&E. But I loathe theatre! Hours of tedium followed by 5 minutes of panic stations.Personally I enjoy my job. My colleagues are a good and diverse bunch of people; whilst you can have a meaningful exchange with your patients you don't get close enough to 'get involved'. Whilst it can be physically tough (lots of 'manual handling' these days- lots of the extreme elderly) you don't get covered in blood or vomit or worse very often !
The NHS is a good employer, by and large. You have lots of rights and not a bad pension scheme. The tosh you read in The Mail largely washes over us as I think it is still true to say the at the pointy end, the NHS does what it says on the tin. It would be fair to say the biggest complainers we come across do tend to be the least unwell!
Bad things?
Mm. I wouldn't want to do our shop-floor hours anymore! THOUGH their longest shift is 16 hours, 4.30pm to 8.30am, I used to do 9am one day to 12.30 lunch time the next before the European Working Time Directive banned such practise!!
You DO get the piss taken- being woken at 4am by some punter with a 3 weeks duration sore toe, for example; Consultants from 'a bygone era' who need a good spanking- arrogant bar-stewards, though again, a lot less of that now that when I started! And in my line, 'forcing' (via coercion, really) elderly patients in their last month or so of life to undergo stressful and upsetting tests to prove what we already know about their condition ("Female, 91, showing signs of confusion. Please do CT head scan"..) Why, why, why? (Fear of litigation: if we don't scan and the post mortem shows a brain tumour NOT that ANYONE would have done ANYTHING about it!- the rellies MAY sue! Butt covering is the biggest drain on NHS funds).
As for the course, there seems to be a lot of work BUT it doesn't actually seem very difficult. You don't actually need to be hot on physics or maths to be a good radiographer. There's a lot of touchy-feely padding as in all health care professional courses these days but I doubt you actually need A level maths, chem or physics to handle the course!
What I'd do is to try and get a few days work experience in a DGH. Ask lots of questions, and try and get to question the current students, too. I did a diploma a thousand years ago so can't really help you with that side of things.
Be aware that jobs in radiography aren't ten a penny like they once were. Admittedly, quite a few students are merely fulfilling their getting into med school as a mature student requirements, and we are always disappointed by the number of 1st year students who actually seem to have no idea what the job entails on their first clinical placement! Wot? TOUCHING patients? Eww!... but I believe all students do seem to get jobs.
I wish you luck but in conclusion, my advice is that in these uncertain times, there are a lot worse professions to be in than health care!