When It's Radiation, No Visitors Allowed (The Washington Post, 4/26/01)

["Jacobus, John (OD/ORS)" <jacobusj@ors.od.nih.gov>]

This article(?) appeared on one of the comics pages in the Thursday's

Washington Post.  -- John

John Jacobus, MS

Certified Health Physicist 

3050 Traymore Lane

Bowie, MD  20715-2024



E-mail:  jenday1@email.msn.com (H)      





When It's Radiation, No Visitors Allowed 



Bob Levey can be reached at (202) 334-7276 or by e-mail at

leveyb@washpost.com, or c/o The Washington Post, 1150 15th Street, N.W.,

Washington, D.C., 20071.

 

By Bob Levey

Thursday, April 26, 2001; Page C09 



Going to the doctor can make you mighty jittery. So when Lisa Shogren went

in for tests one day in late March, she asked her husband if he would

pretty-please accompany her. He agreed.



Lisa had never seen this doctor before, which added to her jitters. So she

asked her husband to accompany her into the examining room.



Again, he agreed. But the doctor and his staff threw up a great big stop

sign.



The rules forbade it, they said.



That sounded fishy to R. Levey, veteran of many (make that "far too many")

visits to doctors.



I accompanied my wife into examining rooms throughout two pregnancies. No

one ever said a word. And when I had heart surgery four-plus years ago, Jane

was right there for every discussion, every X-ray, every turn in the road.



Since Lisa belongs to an HMO, was this another managed-care horror story?



Was it a unique-to-Virginia story (since the doctor who barred her husband

practices in that state)?



Was it a lawsuit story -- a doc worried that the husband might trip while in

the examining room and sue over a bloody shin?



It was Door Number Two. Because one of Lisa's tests involved radiation,

Virginia law bans visitors.



Les Foldesi, program director for the state's Bureau of Radiological Health,

read off the relevant language to researcher Grace Hill- Putnam:



"Only the staff and necessary personnel required for the medical procedure

or training shall be in the room during the radiographic exposure," the

regulations say.



Dr. William Harp, executive director of the Virginia Board of Medicine, said

there are strict "rules governing iodizing radiation." Although "there are

many instances" where it would be "reasonable" for a spouse to be in an

examining room, this isn't one of them, Dr. Harp said.



However, he noted that "everyone wants to be comfortable in the health care

process," so many doctors do whatever they can to allow third parties into

examining rooms. Dr. Harp said that "no laws or regulations" specifically

bar chaperons or family members from examining rooms.



Nor are advocates barred from hospital rooms -- and if anyone ever tries to

do that, I warn you, I'll get ugly.

. . .

So I hope Lisa's hubby won't take the Virginia episode the wrong way. He was

barred from that examining room for his own safety, nothing more.



. . . 



© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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