Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Staff & Patient Safety - October 2019 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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Dosimeters are retrospective tools that allow you to assess the effectiveness of your radiation safety program. If you're following good practice, the vast majority of your employees won't be getting exposed to high amounts of radiation, so the results from the dosimeters should be negligible. In lieu of having professionals on hand to determine who needs these devices, it's easier to badge everyone who works imaging cases. Maintain perspective We're all exposed to about 3 millisieverts of natural radiation each year. The effective dose of a chest CT is about 5 millisieverts, which is equivalent to about a year and change of our natural exposure. Yes, you're working with radiation, but if you understand the fundamen- tals of time, distance and shielding, you can easily keep your occupa- tional exposure well within the variation we're exposed to by simply walking outside. OSM O C T O B E R 2 0 1 9 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 1 7 Mr. Bohan (mike.bohan@yale.edu) is the radiation safety officer at Yale New Haven Hospitals in New Haven, Conn.

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