Assessment of radiation protection awareness and safety practices among nurses in nuclear medicine departments in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This study was aimed to evaluate the level of radiation protection awareness and safety practices among nurses working in nuclear medicine departments (NMDs) in governmental, private, and specialized hospitals in Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional survey was used and distributed to 42 nurses who worked in NMDs without rotation between other radiology departments. A total of 29 nurses (37.9% males and 62.1% females) operating in 12 NMDs across the country responded to the survey, with a 69% response rate. Most of the nurses who responded to this survey were 20–35 years old. Nearly 83% of the nurses in this study had bachelor’s degrees and about 62.1% of the respondents had two to five years of work experience. In the results, it was revealed that the satisfactory awareness score among the nurses working in NMDs was 93.1%, with a mean radiation protection awareness score of 9.58 ± 1.0 (out of 12). However, only 27.5% of the nurses had acceptable safety practices, with a mean score of 2.48 ± 0.1 (out of 6). In the results, it was shown that satisfactory awareness regarding radiation protection among the nurses working in NMDs was significantly associated with gender (P = 0.04, χ2 = 12.6) and nurses who received training courses (P = 0.01, χ2 = 15.2). The findings of this study are an indication of the importance of training and continuing to educate nurses about radiation protection and radiological procedures in NMDs, which improve the levels of radiation protection awareness and safety practices.