Knowledge and practices of radiation safety among healthcare workers in Ismailia city hospitals, Egypt

Abstract

Best medical practices needs health care workers to have an awareness of the possible threats from radiological imaging practices to allow for effective risk/benefit assessments and assurance that ionizing radiation is used skillfully. The aim of this study was to describe the knowledge and practices of health care workers regarding ionizing radiation safety and exposure. A cross sectional study was conducted at four hospitals in Ismailia city, and all health care workers (292) with potential exposure to radiation at the different hospital departments/units were included in the study. A structured self-administered questionnaire was used. The mean scores of correct answers regarding knowledge and practice were as low as 20.6±5.7 and 3.6±4.1 respectively. There is a significant positive correlation between knowledge score and practice score (P<0.0001). The linear regression analysis showed that age, gender and specialty of participants are significant predictors of knowledge while age and working load of participants are predictors of practice. The majority of healthcare workers in this study lacked any specific training or education about radiation protection. We concluded that radiation safety knowledge and practice of participants were poor. Introduction Radiological techniques play an essential role in the management of many diseases and they are used either for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes [1]. It was estimated that about 10 million and more diagnostic radiological techniques and 100000 nuclear medicine checks are being done daily. The national commission on radiological protection and measurements (NCRP)-report 160 entails that medical X-ray represents nearly 95% of all radiological investigations that account for 74% of the collective dose to the United States population [2]. Irrespective of the beneficial effect of the use of ionizing radiation, many risks such as somatic and genetic damages are estimated [3]. The risk of cancer due to diagnostic radiology is estimated to be about 0.5% to 3%. About 7500 and 5700 cases of radiation induced cancer among Japanese and United States population, respectively are attributed to the radiation dose from diagnostic X-ray processes each year [2]. Radiation safety and protection is thus necessary in order to reduce the levels of that exposure [4]. Education is the significant and the key measure of managing radiation safety and each individual using radiation needs to know what radiation is and how to handle it, as there is a growing number of diagnostic radiology procedures performed yearly which increases the concern for practicing radiation safety [5]. Studies have constantly revealed a deficiency of satisfactory awareness among physicians of necessary conceptions related to radiation exposure from medical imaging. In addition, many previous studies have shown that physicians tend to undervalue the hazards of radiation exposure to patients and health care workers [6]. In one study, it was stated that most healthcare workers did not receive any radiation safety-related training (88.8%) and 80.0% of them did not use to read about radiation safety [7]. In another study by Sushant and Sapana (2017), 72 % of the sample knows the meaning of justification, 84% knows the meaning of optimization and 76% of them have a good knowledge about ALARA [8]. The study of Awosan et al., (2016) showed that less than a third (30.0%) of study population knew the limit on effective dose of ionizing radiation for a radiation worker and in another study,