Down the corridor a 10year-old boy rolls along in his wheelchair. He raises his arm to salute a friend. Brendan McCoubrey, a radiographer in Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, Dublin, smiles back. As the two pass each other they exchange `high fives.' The boy, a regular visitor to the hospital, has cerebral palsey.

"I love working with children," says McCoubrey. "They're much easier, much nicer to work with. They are very genuine and very honest. They're funny too. They say you can never lie to children and it's very true."

McCoubrey has been based in the hospital for the past three years. The children and young people who come to the x-ray department can be aged anything from a few hours to 20 years. Cases can vary widely. A teenage boy comes in on a spinal board after a car accident. An x-ray needs to be taken "to make sure that the spine is not damaged." Another case is a child who has suffered a cardiac arrest who "needs a chest x-ray pretty immediately," says McCoubrey.

He leads the way to one of the xray rooms. Inside there is a huge, cream-coloured state-of-the-art CT (computerised tomography) machine. Around the walls there are little crayon drawings from the most regular visitors.

The regular visitors to the x-ray department, he explains, include children with cystic fibrosis, scoliosis and cerebral palsey, who have been coming for years. "You do get to know them and they know the way the system works. We x-ray them on an ongoing basis for years."

McCoubrey loves his work. "There's great job satisfaction. You get a lot of variety. You keep your hand in at everything. We are rotated around all the different areas."

A three-month-old baby in a nappy is laid carefully on the x-ray table, its head cradled firmly in a sponge cut-out support cushion. Her crying ceases and the x-ray process is painless and quick. With older children, McCoubrey explains, you must be equally calm and re-assuring. The parents are also present.

"It's very much hands-on," he says. "We would be involved in bringing the children in and setting them at ease. It's between you, the child and the parents. The child has to stay still and you have to get the best quality film that you can get with the minimum of investigation.

"You must convince them to keep still for the examination. You need common sense. You have to co-ordinate it. Some of the children can be agitated for no reason other than being in a hospital. Some of the long-term patients, even the one-year-olds, would know the ropes and be very content. The x-rays themselves don't hurt, it's just like a photograph."

McCoubrey is the only male among the 16 radiographers working in Our Lady's Hospital. "It has been seen in the past as a profession for women, but it's coming on very fast. Lots more men are starting now."

He choose radiography because he "didn't want to work at a desk. Pages of the CAO form didn't apply to me. Having a job was a big thing and the variety of the job appealed to me." The job prospects are still extremely good, he says.

Having completed the Leaving Cert at De La Salle Secondary School in Churchtown, Dublin, in 1991, he was accepted onto UCD's radiography course at the school of diagnostic imaging. "Very early on you are sent to a hospital for two to three weeks at a time. I liked the way the training was very practical in its approach."

He worked in the Meath Hospital, Dublin, which has an x-ray department with up to 40 radiographers. "I was amazed at how many worked in a hospital," he recalls. "I'd always thought that only one person worked in radiography." After qualifying, he spent three months working at the Mater Private and then started work in Crumlin.

"I'd recommend it as a career," he says happily. "It's nice working with the patients."