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04/18/2023 08:16 AMQuinnipiac University is a special place for Alicia Giaimo. She holds three degrees from the school, including two master’s degrees, and has membership in the Quinnipiac University Athletics Hall of Fame for her achievements as a member of the university’s softball team. North Haven is special, too. Both of her sons play baseball—one is now a freshman at Quinnipiac—and her husband played ball under local legend Bob DeMayo.
“I’m very, very family-oriented, and it just feels like home here,” Alicia says.
At Quinnipiac, Alicia is a clinical professor of diagnostic imaging and the program director of the radiologic sciences department. Her department offers students a hospital-like setting for their studies, with its part of the North Haven campus set up like a hospital. Laboratories outfitted with highly capable X-ray, CT, and MRI scanners are used by students before they have the chance to work at the university’s affiliated hospitals, such as St. Francis in Hartford and St. Vincent’s in Bridgeport.
Alicia has seen many changes that have occurred at the university, but that hasn’t deterred Alicia from leaving it or her hometown, especially with what Quinnipiac still has to offer its students.
“There’s a commandment of education of students and as a teacher…and their push to educate students and leaders of our future, and to be able to be a part of that is something special,” she says.
Talking with those future leaders when prospective medical students, especially those considering diagnostic imaging but unsure of their path in the field, is a conversation Alicia loves to have. It gives her the opportunity to tell them about how radiologists provide some of the most important aspects of medical evaluation and treatment.
“My first comment is simply that literally nothing gets done in medicine without a picture at some point. We’re involved in everything at some point. Whether it’s the diagnosis or maybe we’re involved in treatment, but there’s a picture taken at some point, so that means they have to come to the imaging department,” she says.
Alicia says prospective imaging students at Quinnipiac may ask, “What makes a good student for your program?” She says if they are either technically skilled with a digital system or visual learners, “because we’re all about the picture,” enjoy photography to get the right image or all the above, becoming “medical photographers,” who “get to see the inside instead of the out[side]” of the human body is a good path for them to follow. Compared to other medical professions, it’s economical too.
“The return on investment is huge. You don’t have to go to school for seven, eight years to be making 80, 90, 100 grand. You can do that in four. And in three years, you can graduate and make $65,000 a year, which is really good.”
Alicia’s areas of expertise include women’s health and mammography, where she says, “100% where my passion is.” And while she says, “it was almost expected of a female technologist to become certified in mammography,” she genuinely “fell in love” with the study. Alicia was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, and she understands the gravity of the study and how experts should interact with patients and passes those lessons on to her students.
“I like that you get to help people in a way that could save their life. I like being able to help navigate and have a conversation with a patient and teach, and now teach students to have that conversation, why it’s important,” she says.
Medical journals have been sounding the alarm of a worldwide shortage of radiologists, which could have a harmful impact on the study and treatment of breast cancer. To capture that necessary image, Quinnipiac has one of the biggest programs for its study in Connecticut; that shortage is a fact that does not evade Alicia.
“There’s a huge shortage of technologists in general in the field right now, but in particular mammotechnologists. People have retired, and COVID kind of pushed a lot of those people that were hanging on there.”
She emphasizes the importance of keeping organizations such as the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and operations such as the highly equipped digital mammography van from Yale University fully staffed as possible to keep treatment available for people who may not have insurance or may not know where to look for treatment. Keeping these options available is important, especially for the early detection of curable breast cancer, because “when it’s caught early, this five-year survival rate is 99%,” says Alicia.
The human body and capturing images of its inner workings are a marvel to Alicia; seeing what diagnostic imaging technology is capable of capturing is a sensational sight to behold.
“The way that the body can do that totally on its own, to be able to see it, you can see the stages of healing. We know it takes four to six weeks to heal from a fracture for little kids, six to eight weeks for adults because our bones aren’t in the active growth stage...so it takes a little longer…but we know that it takes that long because we literally can watch it happen.”