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A survey of incidents in radiology and nuclear medicine in the West of Scotland

Health Physics, West House, Gartnavel Royal Hospital, Glasgow G12 0XH, UK

View larger version (26K): [in a new window]   Figure 1. Pie charts showing proportions of different types of incident in imaging departments in the West of Scotland reported over a 10 year period. (a) 417 incidents in radiology departments and (b) 189 in nuclear medicine.

View larger version (28K): [in a new window]   Figure 2. Pie charts showing proportions of different types of patient exposure incidents in imaging departments in (a) radiology (352 incidents) and (b) nuclear medicine (71 incidents).

View larger version (29K): [in a new window]   Figure 3. Pie charts showing distributions of sources of error causing patient exposure incidents in (a) radiology and (b) nuclear medicine.

View larger version (32K): [in a new window]   Figure 4. Distribution of effective doses for unintended patient exposures for nuclear medicine (NM), CT and other radiology techniques (X-ray), where the dose is 0.1 mSv or above. These exclude unintended fetal exposures.

View larger version (35K): [in a new window]   Figure 5. Distribution of effective doses of 0.1 mSv and above from patient overexposures due to human error and equipment faults. Fetal doses from exposure incidents are also shown.

View larger version (32K): [in a new window]   Figure 6. Numbers of different categories of incident occurring each year in nuclear medicine departments in the West of Scotland.

View larger version (38K): [in a new window]   Figure 7. Numbers of main types of incident occurring each year in X-ray departments in the West of Scotland, showing increases in reporting of patient overexposures in recent years.

View larger version (43K): [in a new window]   Figure 8. Numbers of incidents occurring each year in X-ray and nuclear medicine (NM) departments in the West of Scotland that were reported to the regulatory authorities Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), Scottish Executive Health Department (SEHD) and Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

View larger version (32K): [in a new window]   Figure 9. Framework illustrating sources of errors resulting in patient overexposures and defences to prevent them. The upper line of boxes represent the mistakes in various departments that might lead to an incident, while the second line shows the defences that should be in place to identify errors before they develop into incidents. Background influences that may affect the probability of an incident occurring are also shown. RIS, radiology information system; NM, nuclear medicine.