Quality Assurance in Radiography

Question 1

what does quality assurance mean

Answer 1

the planned and systemic execution of procedures to ensure: HIGH QUALITY IMAGES OF HIGH DIAGNOSTIC YIELD at MINIMUM DOSE (ALARP)

Question 2

who carries out the QA?

Answer 2

whole dental does it but there should be a named person responsible for it:

• radiation protection surpervisor
• dental nurse
• operator

Question 3

a good QA programme will be…

Answer 3

comprehensive
cheap
doesnt need to constantly modified
you will audit your QA programme (record each procedure)

Question 4

QA should be divided into…

Answer 4

1. image quality
2. pt. dose and x-ray equipment
3. darkroom, films and processing
4. training
5. audits

Question 5

you can rate image quality in either a ___ evaulation or a ___ evaluation.

Answer 5

prospective. you rate as you view. analyse all later less than 6months.
restorspective. you rate only the ones taken from a sample at regular intervals. analyse all later less than 6months.

Question 6

radiographic reports image quality is either:
excellent
acceptable
unacceptable

what % should you get of each rating?

Answer 6

1. 70% or more should be excellent
2. 20% and below should be acceptable
3. 10% and below should be unacceptable

Question 7

dental x-ray equipments:

who carries out the critical examination?
who carries out the acceptance tests?

Answer 7

critical exam: the RPA + installer.

acceptance test: legal person+ RPA.

Question 8

what is the acceptance test?

Answer 8

this test gives the BASELINE values against which routine tests can be compared

Question 9

what is routine tests for x-ray equipment?

Answer 9

similar to acceptance test but here you are comparing against the previous results to determine the patterns of deterioration.
most common way to do this is via the dental monitoring service postal pack.