The A to Z’s of Sleep Study : Future Specialists Are Learning Profession in a Unique Program Offered at Orange Coast College
COSTA MESA — Charlotte Cox lies on a table with 22 green, red, blue and yellow electrodes glued to her head.
As she relaxes, the electroencephalograph machine she is wired to steadily spits out reams of graph paper filled with black zigzagging lines.
Across the room, a fellow classmate, also sprawled out on a laboratory table, is having his head blown dry with an air hose so wires can be secured to his skull. The room takes on a pungent smell of airplane glue and fingernail polish remover, a result of the odd combination of chemicals needed for the procedure.
But nobody seems to notice.
Gathered on this day at this curious Orange Coast College laboratory are future polysomnography technologists, professionals dedicated to delving into the innermost chambers of someone’s brain in order to diagnose and treat sleep disorders like insomnia and narcolepsy.
Mind readers. Head masters. Brainiacs. It is these students’ job to find out what is on your mind.
“For so long, people have slept with so many problems, they don’t think it is physiological when it is,†said Annette Puma, a first-year student. “This is really interesting because the brain is talking to you.â€
Deciphering the intricate signals of brain waves is just one of the many techniques the 20 or so polysomnography students will learn during the two-year certificate program, believed to be the only one of its kind in the United States.
This is the first year that Orange Coast College has offered the certification program as part of the college’s extensive vocational training curriculum.
The program got its start because of a growing demand for sleep specialists from local sleep centers. Similar centers continue to pop up around the country as people become more aware of sleep problems and are willing to find treatment.
Experienced technologists are needed to operate the equipment, help with the diagnosis and find solutions for sleep-deprived patients.
“The field itself is not that old,†said Mark Brayford, director of the sleep disorder center at Western Medical Center-Anaheim. “But it is really expanding. . . . People are becoming more knowledgeable about the area of sleep.â€
To prepare themselves for the real world, the students’ days are spent hooking each other up to machines, working in nearby sleep centers and studying anatomy, human diseases and other medical disciplines.
All of this is necessary because it takes a well-trained eye to scan a 1,000-page EEG record for a minute, irregular blip that could be an indication of serious physiological problems. Before they are through, the students will have spent about 350 to 400 hours in a sleep center watching people snore, toss and turn and grind their teeth.
“By the time they are done with me, they have been hooked up several times,†said instructor Kevin Ballinger, who along with fellow instructor Dan Adelmann oversees the college program. “They experience what patients are going through. It is good that they understand.â€
Currently, there are about 600 certified, registered sleep technologists in the country. And unlike many other college graduates, when these Orange Coast College students get their degrees, prospects for jobs are very good.
“I don’t know of any registered sleep technologists that don’t have a job,†said Brayford. In fact, about half of the students in the program have already been offered work, he said.
For Puma, polysomnography fit her requirements perfectly. A former saleswoman who was forced to change jobs because of a work-related injury, she needed to retrain herself fast.
“I needed something that I could learn quickly and then get back into the work force,†said Puma, adding that she enjoys her newfound profession. “I find it really interesting. I would eventually like to get into sleep research.â€
But being a polysomnography technologist might not be for everybody. It means a lot of night work. And, like a sleep detective, the technologist is constantly faced with a perplexing set of medical statistics that could mean life or death for the patients.
The most common sleep disorder that polysomnography technologists are likely to run across is sleep apnea. The businessman who falls asleep during meetings or the mother who just can’t seem to wake up during the day are typical clients.
People afflicted with apnea stop breathing during the night. As muscles relax, the airway becomes smaller and may cause snoring. Eventually, the brain realizes that it is suffocating and arouses the patient, therefore depriving him or her of a good night’s sleep.
This can happen hundreds of times during the night, leaving the patient groggy and tired the next day. It can also, in the most severe cases, cause death.
“Sometimes it can be really scary,†said Brayford, who has worked in the field for eight years and helps conduct internships at his sleep center for more advanced students at Orange Coast College.
There are other disorders--like sleepwalking, narcolepsy, grinding teeth and insomnia--that polysomnography technologists may be faced with.
But for now, the students in this lab are just delving into the basics. They are learning all the medical jargon, how to work the machinery and, of course, how to get the electrodes from the EEG machine on and off each other’s head properly.
And then there is always the question of what to do with that smell in their hair.
“You go to your next class looking awful,†said Puma, with a laugh.
* COLLEGES LEARN TO COPE: State budget cuts have had an impact at all campuses. B2-3.
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