TU‐G‐105‐01: International Medical Physics Symposium — Part 2: Making a Difference in the World: Are You Willing to Be Part?
Authors: Rehani M , Goske M , Vassileva J 
Published: July 2013

Many medical physicists have been contributing to make a difference in the world through international organizations. So much has happened and is happening in large part of the world particularly when it comes to assessment of radiation doses to patients in over 50 developing countries, comparing doses with international standards and managing doses. Further preparing and disseminating training material in different languages, QC activities and training courses are activities that have required expertise of AAPM and IOMP members. In recent years more than a dozen papers have been published in peer‐reviewed journals. The momentum generated creates opportunities for collaboration and cooperation between medical physicists from developing countries and with those in USA. AAPM members can contribute effectively in this very stimulating area of work. You can be part of the exercise of making a difference in the world, in making patients safer and in improving the knowledge of colleagues in developing countries.

Madan Rehani will report on approaches utilized in his work through IAEA, Vienna in more than 50 developing countries. Starting from training courses, going over to training material development and making them available for free download in many languages, the use of website as a resource, multinational studies coordinated centrally and ultimately preparing posters that can be used on every x‐ray machine of the world. The talk will cover how you can contribute.

Marilyn Goske, a radiologist from Cincinnati and reformer with impact at global level will review successful strategies that have promoted large scale quality improvement. While there is an increasing body of work that discussed practice quality improvement at a facility level, how can this knowledge be leveraged for quality improvement on a much larger scale in medical physics? This talk will review successful strategies and discuss how these strategies can be applied to the medical physicist community for the purpose of optimizing radiation dose and improving care of children worldwide Jenia Vassileva from Bulgaria will report on results from the largest multinational study of pediatric CT practice in 40 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America initiated and coordinated by the IAEA. In most facilities, paediatric‐specific protocols were being used but these CT protocols were not well optimised. In 8% of the devices CTDI values for paediatric patients were higher than for adults in at least one age group and one examination, in 40% of facilities the imaging protocols were not adapted to the body size. Large variations were found in CTDI values for the same CT examination and the same age group. Patient dose records were kept in less than half of the facilities. Creation of multinational networks appears to be a very effective mechanism.

Learning Objectives:

1. To become familiar with on‐going work in over 50 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America on radiation protection of patients

2. To understand mechanism of cooperation and collaboration

3. To review success and failures for future planning of work in large part of the world.