Current healthcare user of Landauer's New Dosimetry Badge

[Mark Steinbuchel <markst@ONC.hhsys.org>]

Fellow listserver members,
At our institution, we have had multi-year contracts with R. S. Landauer, 
Inc. of IL for a very long time. 
After a briefing by our regional Landauer representative in February, 
on July 1 we implemented the Aluminum Oxide based "Luxel" system with over 
600 monthly whole body (and in some applications collar and of 
course pregnancy dosimetry) devices in our 900 bed hospital (which is the 
second largest in our state).
So far, I have only seen positives in the new technology's implementation.
In the past few weeks, we have held a few of our various user departmental 
annual radiation safety briefing training sessions - where the new 
badging system and copies of results obtained so far, - have been handed 
out to attending users.  As with any "change" we have had lots of 
questions about the technology, how it works and why we changed. These 
dialogs have all been positive and have shown some of our users that they 
now can work together at keeping their dose truely ALARA by seeing their 
actual exposures at these low levels versus the previous "M" for minimal.  
It has added to make them more radiation safety conscious while they fully 
understand that for the non-pregnant worker, this dose level is not very 
significant - it just reinforces the fact that these detection devices are 
a useful radiation safety monitoring tool. Plus they do actually work - 
when some users may wonder if this is a wasted effort when they only see 
the below accuracy threshold of an "M" every month in the departmental dose 
reports we pay for that their department openly posts for them to view.