Assessment of Health Care Workers Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Radiation Safety at a Specialist Hospital, Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria

Radiological doses are low and the chances of long time effect is minimal, but it should be kept as low as reasonably achievable. Therefore health workers especially Doctors requesting for imaging must be well trained in deciding when medical imaging should be carried out and should also have accurate knowledge of the associated risk involved. This can only be achieved if a proper knowledge and safety practice is adhered to. A cross sectional study to investigate the level of health workers knowledge, about radiation safety and their attitude towards radiation safety was carried out. A self administered questionnaire for radiation safety was sent to a purposive sample of 174 Health workers at a Specialist Hospital, in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. 169 questionnaires were filled and return by participant responsive rate 97.1 . The sample include 8 Radiologist, 72 Nurses, 3 Oncologist, 49 Clinicians, 26 Technicians and 11 Surgeons. Majority of the participants have never attain any radiation safety related training 76 . Radiologist and oncologist who were more frequently expose to ionizing radiation, their knowledge was not far better than the other health workers. The general knowledge score ranges from 5.9 to 60.9 , with a low score among nurses and surgeons. The most alarming was the applicability and convenience of radiation protection policies and procedure. Adherence to safety precaution practices was mostly violated by participants, especially nurses and surgeons, but they attributed it to the poor application of protective measures during performing the procedures. The investigation concluded that Health workers in a Specialist Hospital, Jos Plateau State, Nigeria have fair knowledge, negative attitude and poor safety practices towards radiation safety policies and precautions. Chenko G. Y. Nimchang | Ndam Moses Ponsel | Manset W. E. | Songden S. D "Assessment of Health Care Workers Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Radiation Safety at a Specialist Hospital, Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-6 | Issue-6 , October 2022, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd46452.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/medicine/nursing/46452/assessment-of-health-care-workers-knowledge-attitude-and-practices-of-radiation-safety-at-a-specialist-hospital-jos-plateau-state-nigeria/chenko-g-y-nimchang