Are physicians aware enough of patient radiation protection? Results from a survey among physicians of Pavia District– Italy

Abstract

BackgroundRadiological practices are the first anthropic sources of ionizing radiation exposure of the population. However, a review of recent publications underlines inadequate doctors’ knowledge about doses imparted in medical practices and about patient protection that might explain unnecessary radiological prescriptions. We investigated the knowledge of the physicians of Pavia District (Italy) on the risk of radiation exposure.MethodsA cross sectional study was performed involving the Medical Association of Pavia District. Data were collected with a self-administered questionnaire, available on-line with private login and password.ResultsFour hundred nineteen physicians fulfilled the questionnaire; 48% of participants reported training about radiation protection. The average percentage of correct answers on the knowledge on ionizing radiation was 62.29%, with a significantly higher result between radiologist. Around 5 and 13% of the responders do not know that, respectively, ultrasonography and magnetic resonance do not expose patients to ionizing radiations. Only 5% of the physicians properly identified the cancer risk rate associated to abdomen computed tomography.ConclusionsThe findings show a quite good level of the general knowledge about ionizing radiations, higher that reported in literature. Nevertheless, we believe the usefulness of training on the risk linked to radiation exposure in medicine for physicians employed in every area.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-017-2358-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Referral Physicians’ Knowledge of Radiation Dose: A Cross-sectional Study

“…This may be attributed to the precision of the questions; radiation specialists should be able to answer such questions, while the knowledge of physician is expected to be general. Unlike previous studies [13], [25], [29], [32], this study revealed a poor level of knowledge among physicians about ionizing radiation.…”

“…This inconsistency between the reported and actual level of knowledge could indicate that doctors are not aware of their deficiencies. These findings are consistent with previous studies in other countries [13], [25], [29], [31], [32], [33], which also revealed a low level of radiation knowledge among referring physicians. This study found that only 31.7% of the respondents had previous courses on radiation doses in diagnostic imaging which may be a contributing factor in the overall poor knowledge base.…”

“…However, different findings were reported by Quinn et al [34] where it was claimed there was no difference in knowledge between physicians who attended radiation safety courses, and those who did not. Despite the overall poor knowledge that was measured in this study, the respondents showed a fair knowledge about radiation risks (69.0%), which was higher than levels reported by other studies [9], [32], [35]. Furthermore, 77.5% of the respondents in this study had a good level of knowledge about the modalities for radiation dose, in the contrary to the studies of Keijzers and Britton [16] and Gervais et al [36], which showed that the mean error of the physicians' estimates of the radiation dose of imaging modalities was high.…”

“…Furthermore, the results of this study revealed that specialists were significantly more knowledgeable in regards to ionizing radiation and radiation risks. When comparing the Jordanian case with cases from other countries, similarly, poor levels of knowledge were found [13], [17], [18], [25], [29], [32]. However, there were important differences in the demographics of the population, as some sampled students (17,18) and some specialists [13], [25], [38].…”

Perception of Non-radiation Healthcare Workers about Radiation in Cape Coast Metropolis, Ghana

“…The results of this study showed that, most participants had a high level of knowledge on radiation in terms of the types, benefits and effects (Table 3). In contrast, a study by Chun-sing et al, and others showed that physicians and interns had poor knowledge of radiation related to radiological imaging [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. These studies considered all HCWs including radiologists.…”