Transition to digital radiography self assessment of the knowledge of radiology technologists of digital radiology

As the evidences show, medical care facilities are at the threshold of changing from paper- based to patient's electronic records. Digital radiographic image is a new imaging modality whose data could be assumed as a part of every patient's electronic record. It therefore, requires a great number of medical care staff including medical record and radiology department staff. Of those, the role of radiology technologists who take radiographs and perform quality control protocol seems to be crucial. This study aims at evaluateing the current knowledge of digital radiology and its affiliated systems (e.g PACS) of educational hospital radiology technologists. The data was gathered using questionnaire. Eighty three radiology technologists from four educational hospitals participated in the study. The evaluation was performed by presenting four basic questions with four possible choices for every question. A score was also assigned to every choice (1 as the lowest and 4 as the highest score). The result of this cross- sectional study showed that, the knowledge of evaluated subjects was so poor (average score 1.92 of 4) in this context. Therefore, it is suggested, before performing any alteration in radiology departments, the level of staff knowledge in relation with the alteration which is going to be done be evaluated. Then, on the basis of the results a comprehensive and regular in-service training is performed. Yet, these oncoming difficulties are not inevitable because technology advancement inherently is a dynamic phenomena; this means that in-service training is always required.