Welcome to week 2

Hello, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the first week of the course. That was an introduction to the use of X radiation in dentistry and the harm it may present to people who are exposed to it. In the second week, we’ll move on to talk about the two main pieces of UK legislation associated with the protection of people from radiation hazards. We will see how these apply to patients having a dental radiograph as well as to the staff at the dental practice and to other persons who might be involved with or affected by the work with dental X-ray equipment. We’ll also refer to the UK guidance that has been written specifically to assist dental practises to comply with these legal requirements.

To begin with, we’ll go through the requirements of the legislation in a methodical way, starting with those requirements that would need to be considered first by someone planning to set up a new dental practice, and then introducing the other key requirements that apply to dental radiography. We will then discuss the expert advice that the employers require to seek and how you go about sourcing that advice. Following this, you’ll find an article looking at what training is required under the regulations and then you’ll be given a short exercise to work through. The aim of this is to illustrate all the administrative arrangements for radiation protection that have to be put in place when opening a new dental practice.

The last step in this activity will cover situations where different employers have to cooperate in order to ensure that all the employees involved in working with X-ray equipment are kept safe. Examples of when this is necessary include service engineers visiting a practice to instal or test X-ray equipment, and when staff work with X-ray equipment at dental practices other than their employers, for instance as part of their training. Having dealt with the matters covered in week two of the course, a new dental practice will have everything in place that’s required by the regulations before it can start using its dental X-ray equipment. There are further requirements that dental practices have to comply with going forward.

And these will be covered later on in this course.