Towards describing the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on clinical radiography education: A systematic review.

INTRODUCTION: The sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant and rapid changes to the traditional ways of providing radiography education, including adaptations to teaching and learning styles as well as disruptions to students' clinical placement. This review explored the impact of the pandemic on clinical radiography education globally. METHODS: A systematic literature search was conducted on relevant databases, including PubMed, Science Direct, CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and SCOPUS. All relevant articles were critically appraised for quality and subjected to information extraction and results-based convergent synthesis. RESULTS: A total of 17 articles met the inclusion and exclusion criteria for this review. The key findings are themed around challenges and benefits with the introduction of new teaching and learning approaches and resilience exhibited by students during the pandemic to overcome: inadequate support and mentorship while transitioning to fully qualified professionals, challenges with PPE usage, and impact on personal and academic life. CONCLUSIONS: Globally, radiography students experienced several challenges, especially during the initial acute phase of the pandemic. The pandemic-related challenges identified in this review could negatively influence the radiography student attrition rates, consequently worsening the existing radiography workforce shortage. Thus, urgent institutional level support systems and interventions would be necessary to mitigate the pandemic impact and improve the students' learning experience.

Diagnostic reference levels for common computed tomography (CT) examinations: results from the first Nigerian nationwide dose survey.

PURPOSE: To explore doses from common adult computed tomography (CT) examinations and propose national diagnostic reference levels (nDRLs) for Nigeria. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This retrospective study was approved by the Nnamdi Azikiwe University and University Teaching Hospital Institutional Review Boards (IRB: NAUTH/CS/66/Vol8/84) and involved dose surveys of adult CT examinations across the six geographical regions of Nigeria and Abuja from January 2016 to August 2017. Dose data of adult head, chest and abdomen/pelvis CT examinations were extracted from patient folders. The median, 75th and 25th percentile CT dose index volume (CTDIvol) and dose-length-product (DLP) were computed for each of these procedures. Effective doses (E) for these examinations were estimated using the k conversion factor as described in the ICRP publication 103 (EDLP = k × DLP). RESULTS: The proposed 75th percentile CTDIvol for head, chest, and abdomen/pelvis are 61 mGy, 17 mGy, and 20 mGy, respectively. The corresponding DLPs are 1310 mGy.cm, 735 mGy.cm, and 1486 mGy.cm respectively. The effective doses were 2.75 mSv (head), 10.29 mSv (chest), and 22.29 mSv (abdomen/pelvis). CONCLUSION: Findings demonstrate wide dose variations within and across centres in Nigeria. The results also show CTDIvol comparable to international standards, but considerably higher DLP and effective doses.