Patient Informatics

8. Radiation dose recording and monitoring during high volume operations

Monitoring of both staff and patient radiation doses are particularly important during high volume ‘crisis’ operations.

Patient monitoring: as usual, this would ideally be captured electronically from the modality and the dose plus exposure factors utilised passed to the RIS or recorded on the request in any other way. A consistent dose unit should be chosen for all examinations to alleviate the need for conversions.

Staff monitoring: this can be achieved by more rapid rotation of film-based dosimetry badges (changing the badges more frequently), the use of TLDs, or the use of newer instant read technologies available in some markets. Decisions relating to this would be made by the local Radiation Protection Supervisor and records should be kept updated more frequently than usual in order to ensure no increased harm is being made to staff health.