Improving Patient Safety in the Radiology Department of a Hospital

The radiology department has a professional and legal responsibility of ensuring the safety of patients receiving imaging services. Radiation helps in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. However, inappropriate exposure can lead to health hazards for the patient exposed. Every profession in the radiology department has a moral responsibility of ensuring that patients are protected from radiation through justification, optimization, and limiting of the dose given.

1. Justification. The goal of any medical procedure is to ensure that as much good is done with little or no harm to the patient, and the use of radiation on a patient should be justified. Patient justification involves three levels (ESR & EFRS, 2019). Level 1 ensures that proper use of radiation to done so that more good than harm is done to the patient. Level 2 identifies and justifies the procedure to determine if the radiological procedure will help diagnose and treat the patient by providing useful information. Finally, at level 3, the objectives of the process should be justified, and the conditions of the patient should be considered.
2. Optimization. It involves determining the level of protection and exposure and ensuring the magnitude of exposure dose is As Low As Reasonably Achievable ( ALARA) while maintaining social and economic balances (ESR, 2019). Optimization protection is done for all patients after Justification. During scanning, optimization tools such as the length of the scan, number of scans, and dose modulation are utilized.
3. Dose incident. It summarizes unintended and accidental overexposures that are different from the intended exposure (EFSR, 2019). Radiation protection requires that all efforts are made to prevent such incidents from occurring. When an incident occurs, the medical practitioners should follow up, and the patient should be informed about the incident. Dose Reference Levels (DRL) are used to identify high exposure procedures.

Reference

European Society of Radiology (ESR), & European Federation of Radiographer Societies (EFRS). (2019). Patient safety in medical imaging: A joint paper of the European Society of Radiology (ESR) and the European Federation of Radiographer Societies (EFRS). Insights Imaging 10, 45. Web.