EMERGENCY PROCEDURES MANUAL - Department of Health

CODE BROWN
An appointed Radiation Safety Officer (RSO)* should oversee:
• A radiation monitoring system of a type and magnitude to be able to check all
material and essential personnel entering and leaving the control area. Eg. Geiger
Counter.
• That all staff involved wear PPE and a Thermo-Luminescence Dosimeter (TLD)
badge to monitor radiation exposure. New TLDs are not normally available at
short notice and Personal Pocket Dosimeters may be available to be utilised at
short notice. If there is insufficient monitoring equipment available,
representative staff should be monitored to gauge group exposure.
• The decontamination procedure, ie wound and internal decontamination.
• Monitoring of the control area during decontamination prior to release for general
usage.
• If the contamination is known to be due to iodine, the patient should also be given
one dose of KCLO 4 (200 mg), KI or Lugol's Iodine (0.5 mL). Thyroid uptake
measurements should be made as soon as possible by the RSO.
• If a large radiation exposure [greater than 0.5 Sv] is suspected or the
contamination is internal, or if decontamination fails, the patient should be
admitted, isolated & monitored for possible Acute Radiation Syndrome. In such a
case a Radiation Oncologist and a Haematologist should also be notified.
• That all persons who may have come into contact with a contaminated patient:
a) Keep contact with patient brief and wear dosimeters.
b) Avoid close contact with the patient or the source.
c) Are rotated to minimise individual exposure.
d) Are not pregnant.
e) Are monitored and cleared before leaving the hospital.
Once a patient has been decontaminated, they can become part of the hospital’s
routine disaster plan patient flow.
*RSO = “Radiation Safety Officer”. Will be the Director of Physics & Medical
Engineering If not available, consider appointing either - the Nuclear Medicine
Technologist on-call, the Medical Imaging Physicist, or approach Peter MacCallum
Institute staff for advice.
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