Ahmad Badeenezhad
The present study targets to delve into the patients’ awareness of the risks of imaging experiments and also to identify the gaps existing in the radiation health training to the patients regarding the demographics such as age, education and etc. This research is a descriptive cross-sectional study done during 2019-2020. The study was conducted as a questionnaire on 319 patients selected randomly. The questionnaire consisted of 34 options in various areas including demographics, the awareness of different imaging modalities and also the patients' expectations of physicians about the training level required for the imaging modalities. The data were collected by question-answer method run by the researcher and analyzed by SPSS. The mean score of radiation health awareness in the study participants was estimated as 65.89% ± 14.37% and this rate was 67.15% ± 32.06% and 64.13% ± 13.75% in the women and men, respectively. The study revealed the majority of the patients (60.2%) with average radiation awareness and also the average radiation health awareness rate in the participants as bachelor, master and illiterate as 66.14% ± 63.16%, 72.15% ± 28.48% and 59.72% ± 4.96%, respectively. Despite the individuals being highly willing (more than 90%) to receive information from their physicians about the required test, the level of the information trained by the physician to the patient is low (almost below 50%). Most of the study subjects lacked thorough radiation health awareness; even the study awareness about different questioned areas was highly different. Lack of awareness of safe imaging of pregnant women and the background radiation was minimized. Thus, regarding the significance of the individuals’ knowledge of the radiation risks, it is necessary for the relevant agencies and authorities taking the due measures to raise public awareness in this area.