Free Health Dissertations - The Radiographer Is Therefore Well Placed To Recognise An Abnormality Even
The radiographer is therefore well placed to recognise an abnormality even though they may not fully appreciate the full clinical significance of what is on the film. The same argument can be applied to the clinician, who can generally recognise pathology in a patient but may not be so familiar with the X-Ray changes.
The red dot system requires the radiographers to examine the film after it has been ordered by the clinician. If they feel that there is an abnormality on it they will place a self-adhesive red dot on it to denote that they believe that it contains an abnormality. Clearly this does not relieve the clinician of the responsibility of examining the film as, the legal responsibility for interpreting the film must rest with him. This is only reasonable since even the most experienced radiologist would only give a report on what he could see on the film, the full significance of the changes seen can only be fully assessed by a healthcare professional who has also seen and assessed the patient. As we will discuss later, the converse argument that the absence of a red dot does not imply that there isn’t an abnormality it only denotes that the radiographer hasn’t seen one.
The red dot system
In a letter to the BMJ Keith Piper (2003) outlined the case for the red dot system and the radiographer reporting system (See on). It was initially suggested by the Audit Commission in 1993 that radiographers could be trained to interpret certain images and this was found to be of particular interest in view of the difficulties that some departments currently experience with the reporting service
The first accredited course was run in 1994 many radiographers have since been reporting on primary skeletal X-Rays in A&E departments
Piper points out that the system is designed to reduce errors in reporting X-Rays. It is ultimately totally reliant on the radiographs being finally reported by a senior radiologist in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, this is not always the case as Beggs pointed out in 1990 when it was found that over 20% of UK teaching hospitals did not report on all accident and emergency films
With specific reference to the red dot system, the letter by Aldridge and Freeland (2000) passes comment on the system which is in use in their hospital and, having audited it, they present their results. The system in use conforms to that currently outlined by British Association of Accident and Emergency's guidelines (1983). The important facets of their system include
The rapid return of X-Rays to the requesting clinician
Reporting of X-Rays by a consultant radiologist within 24 hrs.
Telephone recall of patients who have mistakes picked up
The use of the red dot system by the radiographers
The use of such X-Rays for teaching purposes for staff
As far as the audit of the red dot system was concerned, they report the last audit showed an 1.5% false positive result, 2.
Dissertations - Free Health Dissertations
