Polysomnographic Technician

As a Polysomnographic Technician, you’ll be taking the best scientific tools available to observe and diagnose potential sleep disorders in your clients. Some of the things you observe are brain waves, muscle activity, heart rates, and breathing rates. There’s a surprising amount of activity in a person that’s asleep, actually!

To keep track of this, you need some fancy equipment. The EEG (electroencephalogram) measures brain wave, the EOG (electrooculogram) measures eye movement, the EMG (electromyogram) watches your muscles, and the ECG (electrocardiogram) measures heart rate. It’s a mouthful, but a trained Polysomnographic Technician can take the data from these machines and paint the picture of just what is keeping a patient from getting the rest they need.

While some Technicians work directly with patients who are struggling with disordered sleep, many will help out with sleep-based studies. In this setting you use their skills to collect and report data for studies to understand the nature of sleeping, dreaming, and sleep disorders. Other times you might work with Medical Doctors to collect data from their patients as part of a larger diagnosis.

As you might expect, Sleep Technicians can find work in hospitals, clinics, and sleep centers with equal ease. If you were trying to kill Freddy Krueger, you’d want to employ a Polysomnographic Technician as your home base commander.