Knowledge, attitude and practices of radiology workers about the harmful effects of radiation for diagnostic purposes

Although substantial radiological methods appearing in accordance with developing technology year by year have a crucial impact on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, they cause more ionised radiation to influence our lives. When taking into consideration the benefits of radiological methods,because it is impossible to give up these applications, minimising the radiation imposed through radiological examinationsis an issue to be cared about by all radiology employees. In this study, the questionnaire developed in order to identify radiology employees' knowledge about, attitudes towards and applications of ionised radiation imposed diagnostically in the field of medicine was administered to 202 radiology employees between March 15 and June 30, 2014. The study has a diagnostic and sectional pattern and was conducted in Diyarbakır and surrounding towns. The mean of age of 202 radiology employees (111 males and 91 females) is 32,51. In addition to that 7,9% of the radiology employees suffer from various chronic diseases, three of them declare that they have been diagnosed to be cancer.According to the participants, the most frequent health problem is loss of hair (53%), 90,6% of the radiology employeesare not aware of the annual MMED limits for their patients while 83,7% of them do not know that for themselves.Moreover, 82,2% of them have no idea about the amount of ionised radiation imposed through one abdomen BTequals the amount of radiation imposed through how many PA lung graphies. That no ionised radiation is included in MR is known by 91% of the employees, and in USG by 89,5% of them. Yet, some of them do not know that ionised radiology is used in mammography (41%), in BT (32%), in angiography (34%) and fluoroscopic applications (30,5%). 21,9% of the employees inform that they do not use dosimetry and that the most important reason for this is the distrust in the dosimetry results. it has been shown that radiology employees need to be increased about radiation safety with in-service trainig.