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Reporting Radiation Incidents in Tasmania Guideline
Radiation incident means an incident adversely affecting, or likely to adversely affect, the environment or the health or safety of any person because of the emission of radiation. Radiation incident must be reported under Section 12 of the Radiation Protection Act. This guideline has been prepared to assist licence holders to determine threshold for reporting radiation incidents. The guideline has listed a number common or typical incident scenarios that may occur at variety of practices or operations. However, there may be many other situations which cannot be predicted, and licence holder or Radiation Safety Officer (RSO) must use their own judgement to report those radiation incidents.
This guideline does not present incidents scenarios for Radiotherapy centres due to the fact that patients goes through significant assessment by Radiation Oncologist before, during and after their treatment. Medical Physicists and Radiation Therapists also plays a vital role in ensuring quality of treatment. However, it should be noted that Radiation incidents at Oncology centres may be significant, such as incorrect patient treatment volume, incorrect treatment planning, inadvertent exposure of staff and service technician during testing and calibration of Linear Accelerator and planning CT, fault with equipment or software etc. It is the responsibility of the Chief Medical Physicist, licence holder or site RSO to report major incidents promptly, i.e. verbally as soon as possible and in writing within seven days of the incident.
Radiation incidents must be reported in the prescribed incident report form.
Health Physicist from the Radiation Protection will assess each radiation incident, and is expected to provide feedback to licence holder for improvement and to reduce possibility of similar incidents in future.
Radiation incidents are expected to be reported to the Australian Radiation Incident Report Register (ARIR) at regular intervals. ARIR is the Australia's national database of all radiation related incidents. The purpose of the ARIR is to raise awareness on where, how and why radiation incidents and events occur, and how they can be best prevented.
Table 1- Example of Reportable Radiation Incidents
|
Practice Type |
Equipment type |
Nature of Radiation Incident |
|---|---|---|
|
Medical Diagnostic Radiology – X-ray |
Diagnostic x-ray, CT, Mammography, BMD, Fluoroscopy, Mini C-arm etc |
|
|
Medical Diagnostic Radiology – Nuclear Medicine |
Nuclear Medicine CT, PET, SPECT, Gamma Camera |
|
|
Dental Radiology |
OPG, CBCT |
|
|
Dental Radiology |
Intra oral |
|
|
Portable soil moisture density gauge (PDMG) |
Sealed sources |
|
|
Industrial Radiography |
Sealed sources X-ray |
|
|
Veterinary Radiology |
X-ray Nuclear Medicine |
|
|
Cosmetic and Beauty Therapy |
LASER - Class 3B and 4 IPL |
|
|
Surgical procedures, Dental and Veterinary Laser, Laser Therapy |
LASER - Class 3B and 4 |
|
