Radioprotective garments protect medical radiation workers from exposure to hazardous ionizing radiation at the workplace. However, previous studies have found poor adherence to the use of radioprotective garments. We are eager to know what prevents them from fully protecting themselves with the provided garments. Thus, we conducted face-to-face in-depth interviews with medical radiation workers to explore their perceptions related to the use of radioprotective garments and seek the reasons for their non-adherence. Five themes emerged with respect to perceptions on the use of radioprotective garments: (i) the dilemmas in practising radiation protection, (ii) indication of workers’ credibility, (iii) physical appearance of radioprotective garments, (iv) practicality of radioprotective garment use, and (v) impact on workflow. Actual lack of radioprotective garment use was attributed to inadequate number of thyroid shield and other garments like radioprotective gloves and goggles, garments’ unsightly appearance including being dirty and defective, impracticality of using radioprotective garments for some nuclear medicine procedures, disruption of workflow because of workers’ limited movements, attitudes of workers, and organisational influences. The report on detailed findings was recently published by Ms Farizwana and her supervisors in Heliyon, an all science open-access journal by Elsevier. Ms Farizwana was supervised by Dr Marzuki Isahak and AP Dr Nirmala Bhoo-Pathy for her PhD study. The full paper can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02478
You may also like
On the 4th of July, 2018, Prof Dr Victor Hoe delivered a lecture on “Water Quality and Public Health Implications along the […]
The Department would like to congratulate Dr Sophia Ramli on her successfully completion of her DrPH Viva-voce. She was supervised by Prof […]
The SPM Departtment through the AsiaLink collaboration has organized a workshop on Clinical Epidemiology on the 30th September until 2nd October 2009 […]
The Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya received visitors from the Faculty of Public Health, Universitas Sumatera Utara (USU) on 30 November […]
You must be logged in to post a comment.