Medical radiation workers and their radioprotective garments

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