About This Special Issue
The Radiology Department in the hospital plays a crucial role in initial care and management of the casualties. The aim of this issue is to raise awareness of the importance of radiology department involvement and how it might improve radiology department services and readiness for trauma / critical patients. The objectives of disaster risk reduction are to increase resilience and to comprehend, prevent, reduce, and mitigate catastrophe risk.
Facility Preparation for Radioactively Contaminated Patients for Radiological Examinations and Activate hospital plan to Obtain radiation survey meters, call for additional expert supporting staff to establish triage area and decontamination of uninjured persons. All aspects of patient throughput in the radiology department should be addressed in the hospital initial command system plan. Additional specialized radiological studies may not be available on-site. Plans must be in place to obtain these studies at another institution or to transfer patients if necessary. To test emergency preparedness level in radiology department, correct mistakes of various role players, avoid misunderstanding in roles and responsibilities, for better coordination among the teams, make it accustom so as to react instantly/correctly, check the proper functioning of instruments used by disaster response teams, call radiologists to provide immediate readings of plain films and special studies because “Time is Treatment”. Conduct mock drill to ensure timely availability of monitoring equipment (radiation dosimeters for measuring), imaging equipment including PACS for immediate treatment etc. Create radioactive contamination screening protocol in radioactivity disaster e.g. Nuclear Disasters, safety measures regarding radiation dose etc. The plan should also optimize and streamline radiological study protocols for use during a mass casualty event. Individuality of the patient should be maintained. Each patient should have its unique identification that can be done by providing him/her some specific ID No. Patient should be admitted/ transferred according to their condition to respective wards. Patient prioritization according to the nature of injury for radiological examination should be done properly.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Interventional radiology
- Computed tomography
- Magnetic resonance imaging
- Disaster management in radiology department