I've stood where you're standing.

I'm Stephanie Smith: Canadian radiographer, educator, R.T.(R), and CAMRT member.

I trained in Canada and spent my early career in Canadian hospitals: trauma imaging in Calgary, pediatric imaging at a children's hospital, mammography and bone density work, and a stretch in Whitehorse in Canada's north. In 2006 I left Canada for a teaching position in the Gulf, for what I thought might be a few years. It became the unexpected centre of my professional life.

For the past eighteen years I've taught medical radiography to students from all over the world: the Philippines, India, Egypt, Sudan, the Gulf, and beyond. I develop and deliver a BSc Medical Radiography curriculum aligned to the CAMRT Competency Profile and Accreditation Canada (EQual) standards, and I've contributed to accreditation submissions and site visits. Preparing internationally educated radiographers for the CAMRT exam isn't a sideline for me. It's my actual day job.

And after every exam sitting, I debrief with my students. That's where I learned what really decides this exam. It's rarely the physics or the positioning. My students know their radiography. It's the patient-care scenarios that demand Canadian-style critical thinking, and the English and cultural nuances no textbook warns you about. One student told me she froze on a question about an "avalanche", not because she didn't know the radiography, but because she'd never needed the word. That's the gap I coach.

I believe in patient-centred radiography, the kind where the person on the table matters more than the protocol, and that's the lens I teach through. I'm also writing a book about leaving Canada in 2006 and the professional journey I never saw coming. Working with students like you is one of its best chapters.