During a busy afternoon, a scheduled patient is missing from the modality worklist. The RIS shows the exam under a record whose name and date of birth were corrected last week, and the study must be finished before the clinic closes. Which step should the technologist take first to link the images to the correct patient record?

The correct approach is to establish the patient's identity with the site's required identifiers, confirm that the corrected RIS record is the authoritative one, and then re-query the modality worklist. Selecting the matching exam from that refreshed list links the acquisition to the intended scheduled record and its current patient demographics. Manually entering demographics and an accession number can be a legitimate downtime workflow, but it bypasses the available worklist and does not ensure that the modality has selected the corrected scheduled exam. Using a prior modality record may help populate familiar demographics, yet it relies on an older record rather than confirming the corrected RIS record; prior images are useful for comparison, not as the source for today's patient and exam association. Acquiring under a temporary unscheduled entry and reconciling afterward can be appropriate under an approved exception process, but it postpones the required link and creates an avoidable reconciliation step when the corrected scheduled exam can be selected first. Exam caveat: local policy may specify additional identifiers or an approved downtime process, so do not assume name and date of birth alone are sufficient. Practical check: before exposure, compare the displayed patient identifiers and exam/accession details with the verified RIS record and confirm they match.