Documenting Surveys by Lab Personnel

["Sue M. Dupre" <DUPRE%PUCC.bitnet@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>]

Good Afternoon!  Our Radiation Safety Guide requires lab personnel to record
the results of contamination surveys in a survey log - this includes the sur-
vey they perform as they open radioisotope packages, as well as the work area
and personal surveys which they perform.  It was suggested to us during an
audit of our radiation safety program that we should consider eliminating the
need to document surveys done by lab personnel.  The surveys would continue to
be performed but no records of those surveys would exist.  Please note also
our Health Physics Section does perform routine contamination surveys which are
and would continue to be documented.

This recommendation from our auditor had two aspects to it:  1)  We include our
Radiation Safety Guide by reference in our license application, so when lab
personnel don't document their surveys now, then we are out of compliance with
license conditions (we plan to address this issue in part by eventually remov-
ing the Guide as part of our license application), and 2) in actual practice,
lab personnel often don't document their own surveys, so why impose a condition
on them which doesn't produce great tangible benefits, which is not regulatori-
ly required and for which compliance will be difficult to achieve?

We are ourselves are not in agreement about this issue and we are very inter-
ested in what approaches other institutions may take.  One idea we came up with
was to require the logging of surveys only when contamination was discovered
during the survey.  Please let me know how you have handled this question.
Thanks so much for your help!

Sue Dupre/Health Physicist/Princeton University
dupre@princeton.edu