Abstract:

Background: Medical imaging students are often exposed to radiation during their training and will eventually become professionals who work with radiation on daily basis. It’s important to have good knowledge, attitude and practices of radiation safety and protection due to the potential risks associated with the exposure of ionizing radiation in the field of medical imaging. Several guidelines and regulations were issued for this purpose including; the POPUMET regulations and ALARA principle and the WHO global initiative on radiation safety in health care settings.

Objectives: To determine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of medical imaging students towards radiation safety and protection.

Methods: A cross section al method was used, random sampling technique was used by distributing questionnaires to draw a total of 204 participants from year 1,2 and 3 both BSc MIR and DDR students at catholic university of health and allied sciences. Data obtained was entered in Microsoft excel and analysed by SPSS. Likert scale was used to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of medical imaging students and the results presented in tables, charts, and figures.

Results: In total, 204 medical imaging students of different year of study were recruited for the study, majority, n= 191 (93.6%) were between 18yrs and 25yrs old, n=126(61.8%) male and n=78(38.2%) female, single n=197(96.6%) and married= 7(3.4%), DDR n=150(73.5%) and BSc MIR n=54(26.5%). Participants with good knowledge were n= 195(95.8%) with poor knowledge were n=9(4.2%), with good attitudes were n= 119(57.7%), with bad attitude were n=85(42.3%) and often practice were n= 115(56%) sometimes were n 30(15%) rarely n= 59(29%)

Conclusion: Radiation safety and protection is very important to medical imaging students. From the study majority of participants have good knowledge on radiation safety and protection but their attitude and practices on radiation safety and protection is still not satisfactory it needs to be improved especially during clinical training.