A Comprehensive Analysis of Best Practices towards Radiation Safety Measures for Medical Diagnostic Imaging Equipments in Government Hospitals, Tamil Nadu, India

Aims: To evaluate the current maturity of business processes evolved and implemented to comply with regulatory guidelines by Government hospitals for containing man-made ionising radiation while using medical diagnostic imaging equipments. To statistically test and conclude whether any significant differences exist in day-to-day practices between Metro and Non-metro cities hospitals. To test and conclude whether patient queue size influences regulatory compliance score.

Study Design: Descriptive Research design has been adopted in this study.

Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted in Tamil Nadu, India covering 33 metro and non-metro cities, for the period between July 2016 and March 2017.

Methodology: This research has sampled 38 Government hospitals spread across Tamil Nadu, India who has agreed to participate and provide information in this study out of 42 institutions approached. This study is based on the Regulatory guidelines published by Atomic Energy Regulatory Body, the Regulatory Body in India which controls the distribution and usage of Diagnostic Imaging equipments, 7 dependent parameters (Regulatory, Layout Engineering, Technician Competency, Human Safety, Operations Know-How, Radiation Exposure Monitoring and Top Management Commitment) and a structured questionnaire with 70 questions on a seven point scale (inclusive of zero) was constructed and administered for data collection. Non-parametric statistics has been adopted for statistical analysis of data.

Results: The analysis of compliance data has shown exceptional compliance in all the variables studied and found to be at the higher side of the measurement scale (Regulatory 5, Layout Engineering 6, Technician Competency 6, Human Safety 6, Operations Know-How 6, Radiation Exposure Monitoring 6 and Top Management Commitment 6). The Chi-square test has concluded that there is no significant difference in regulatory compliance score between Government hospitals in metro cities and non-metro cities (Minimal chi-square value 0.109547; df 6 and ‘P’ value 0.9999). Spearman Rank correlation coefficient ‘rho’ was found to be - 0.095, with a “P” value (0.5712) more significant than alpha (0.05) at 95 percent confidence interval established very weak negative and insignificant relationship between patient queue size and compliance index.

Conclusion: It was quite evident from this research study that Government hospitals have established an extraordinary level of regulatory compliance (between Very High Compliance and Complete Presence of best practices recommended by AERB).The most distinguishing feature that has led to superior compliance is the full-time availability of Radiation Safety Officer as a change leader in all the hospitals. The patient crowd size did not influence compliance score, and it was due to the inherent nature of superior commitment from Top Management. This research study further recommends similar research work in other states of India and high tech global practices in information security prevalent in monitoring hospitals for safeguarding Patient Health Information (PHI).