Radiation Safety Tips for Veterinary Offices

Running a veterinary clinic is no easy task: calming anxious pet owners, pacifying scared animals, and keeping your staff safe are all top priorities. But one of the biggest potential dangers to staff is exposure to ionizing radiation through X-rays. To maintain a safe clinic, keep these following tips in mind:

• Provide shielding for staff members who work with radiation. The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements recommends that staff wear lead aprons, thyroid shields and protective gloves and glasses.

• When patients are uncooperative, try to use sedation. When an animal struggles, it can become almost impossible for a person to keep his or her hand or arm out of the beam. Sedation ensures that both the animal and staff member stay safe.

• Collimate your equipment to ensure that staff are using the smallest amount of radiation possible for the desired procedure. This not only protects the staff, but also the animal, from receiving exposures that are higher than necessary.

• Educate your staff members about radiation safety. Take ownership of the office radiation safety guidelines and assume responsibility of making sure everyone in your office that does x-ray adheres to important guidelines.

• Provide each staff member with a dosimeter to measure radiation exposure. Staff members who work with or near radiation should wear a dosimetry badge at all times. This keeps track of the amount of radiation that your staff are exposed of each month.  

Running a safe clinic is not only good for your staff, it’s also good for business. Z&Z Medical takes Radiation Safety seriously and has a wide variety of protective devices, shields, and dosimetry badges to keep you in compliance and to keep your staff safe. Visit our website at www.zzmedical.com or email us at info@zzmedical.com to learn more.