Re: Rad workers - but not trained

[Richard Smart <R.Smart@unsw.edu.au>]

At 07:44 PM 9.2.97 -0600, Sandy Perle wrote:

>I agree that they should be trained prior to working with radioactive 
>materials or radiation generating equipment. I do know that for the 
>most part, hospital x-ray techs as well as nuclear medicine techs do 
>receive educational training. My question remains, isn't radiation 
>exposure, regulations, protection devices and radiation saftey 
>taught? 

Certainly in Australia, and I imagine also in the US, radiation safety is a
core subject of all the medical radiation specialties - radiology, nuclear
medicine and radiotherapy.  This includes the current ICRP and national
regulations.

What happens of course is that regulations change (eg dose limit from 50
mSv/y to 20 mSv/y) and refresher courses may be lacking in covering these
changes.

The other problem that I experienced in relation to their personal doses
occurred when we swapped from film dosimeters to TLD. The reported limit of
detection went from 200 uSv to 10 uSv, so many staff found that their
reports changed from "not reported" (ie < 200 uSv) to say 50 uSv.  It was
necessary to organise in-service training sessions with each department or
ward using monitors to explain these "apparent" increases in dose.

Richard Smart PhD
Department of Nuclear Medicine
St. George Hospital
Kogarah, NSW 2217
Australia
Tel:61 2 9350 3112
Fax:61 2 9350 3991
Email:R.Smart@unsw.edu.au