Wearing lead while doing portables????

wvaio · Joined: 22 Sep 2007 Posts: 82

Questions for the students out there:

Does your school require you to wear lead while on portables, even though you are nowhere near the patient?

At my facility, we have students from various places. One of the schools REQUIRES that the students wear lead for the entire time they are gone doing portables. They get a stern warning that if their "clinical coordinator" shows up and you don't have the lead on...trouble, trouble, trouble.
Most of their students take their chances of that happening, but occasionally you get one student that does things "by the book".

We do a ton of portables, and the practice is disturbing and sometimes disruptive. It looks silly having a person walking through the halls of the hospital in a massive full size apron and thyroid collar to boot.

Is this happening anywhere else? I am very curious!

Thanks for you time,
Wvaio

gulfshrimp · Joined: 21 Jun 2008 Posts: 6

Luckily, my school doesn't.

954heat · Joined: 29 Sep 2007 Posts: 73 Location: south florida

i just graduated a few weeks ago and never while i was a student did i do that, nor did i know of anyone or any school that did.

Smooth23 · Joined: 27 May 2009 Posts: 26 Location: Michigan

That's just odd. There's no reason to wear lead if you're not exposed, so walkin around wearing lead all day would just be a waste of energy. Our rule is to always step out and around the corner when exposing on ports.

aprice · Joined: 23 Nov 2009 Posts: 4 Location: cincinnati, ohio

our program director has told us, numerous times, that it is state law in ohio to wear lead while making the exposure. I do not walk around with the lead on but I will put it on when making the exposure and have anyone not wearing it stand behind me. if it is truly state law then it would be stupid not to wear it. she may just be saying that to cover her ass. either way, you may still get minimal amounts of scatter at a distantce, better safe than sorry,

hjhogle · Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2009 10:37 pm Post subject:

I don't know where the first poster was from, but the last was from Ohio.

According to the State of Ohio Department of Health, the relevant state regulation is:
(a) All individuals shall be positioned such that no part of the body shall be struck by the useful beam unless protected by not less than 0.5 millimeter lead equivalent material;
(b) The x-ray operator, other staff, ancillary personnel, and other persons required for the medical procedure shall be protected from the direct scatter radiation by protective aprons or whole body protective barriers of not less than 0.25 millimeter lead equivalent material;

That information was found during a simple internet search of the State of Ohio Department of Health, where I pulled up an Adobe document titled 3701:1-66-02 General administration requirements for handlers of
radiation-generating euipment. That document can be found here: http://www.odh.ohio.gov/ASSETS/7694274724A4419DA9562AF01E4190D1/Fr66_02.PDF

hjh, RT