Background/introduction
Sidra Medicine is a recently activated paediatric hospital in Qatar. The radiology department initiated the use of a dose monitoring system alongside service activation, which had the distinct advantage of embedding the dose monitoting system in clinical practice from the start.
The work presented in this poster demonstrates howthe dose monitoring systemhas beenimplemented inour paediatric radiology service to monitor radiation doses and identify areas of improvement.
Description of activity and work performed
Our dose monitoring system was configured to receive Radiation Dose Structured Reports either via the Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS)or directly from modality equipment, depending on clinical workflows. For example, as studies in the catheterization laboratory do not always require pushing images to the hospital PACS, the Radiation Dose Structured Reports were sent directly from the modality equipment to the dose monitoring system upon completion of each study.
All pieces of equipment were assignedunique identifiers. Filters were then applied within the dose monitoring systemso...
Conclusion and recommendations
Investigation of alerts generated by the dose monitoring system lead to a review of protocols and workflows with the help of radiographers, radiologists and medical physics, and resulted in a number of improvements, summarized in Figure 3. Through a combination of education and changes to equipment configuration, the number of alerts has significantly reduced in all modalities indicating a clear trend of continuous dose optimization.
As our facility is new and local Diagnostic Reference Levels were not available, the alerts were based on the National...
Personal/organisational information
C. E. Kelly; Doha/QA - nothing to disclose I. Delakis; Doha/QA - nothing to disclose J. Goracy; Doha/QA - nothing to disclose C. Owens; London/UK - nothing to disclose
References
[1] Report 185. European Guidelines on Diagnostic Reference Levels for Paediatric Imaging. European Commission, 2018.