Inside Radiology

Patient Rights

When you enter the radiology department, there are certain things you should expect:

1. Prompt service. All sorts of things happen in radiology, including equipment failures, emergency cases, and other unavoidable tragedies, but your appointment should be kept or someone needs to explain why. Certainly once your test has begun, it should be over in the soonest possible time, and you should be allowed to go home or go back to your room.

2. Courteous service. This should be available throughout the hospital and is not unique to radiology. Hospitals, however, are increasingly feeling the strain of reconciling increased costs and diminished reimbursements. Employee shortages at many hospitals have put the remaining staff in stressful circumstances, which is now and then reflected in a sharp remark or ill-humored comment. That is not to say that such behavior is acceptable, but it may help you put things in better perspective.

3. Privacy. Patients who are in various states of undress should not be paraded in front of everyone walking through the x-ray department. Gowns and sheets need to be attended to, and doors should be kept close. All persons who are involved in the test need to be introduced. If there is someone who is not usually present, such as a college or medical student, the patient should be asked permission for that person to be in attendance. Entering radiology is no reason for patients to lose the common courtesies that we provide one another everywhere else.

4. Confidentiality. This should go without saying. Patient information should be protected from prying eyes. If you run into an acquaintance working in the x-ray department as a clerk or technologist, you should be able to expect that information about your health will remain confidential.

5. Informed consent. If you are going to have a test that involves some risk, you should be told all about those risks as well as about possible alternatives.

6. The right to ask questions. You are entitled to have your questions answered. Just as you have the right to speak up if you have a question anywhere else in this civilization, you have the right to say what needs to be said while you are in radiology. If some sort of activity concerning your case seems to be causing alarm, for example, you have the right to ask what is going on. If your physical privacy is not respected, you have the right to ask the members of the department to take corrective action. Whatever you want to call yourself, patient or consumer, you have the right to question the service.

7. Pain control. The days of biting bullets and being ashamed to show pain are over. There is no reason to have severe, prolonged pain in radiology. If your condition is causing the pain, tell us and we will deal with it. If we are causing the pain, just tell us to stop or ask for more medication. On the other hand, though a barium enema is a famously inconvenient test, it is not really painful and medication would definitely be overkill. Remember that there are side effects to all medications that reduce pain.

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8. To get results in a timely manner. The report should be out in 24 hours, but 48 hours may be considered acceptable in certain circumstances, depending, of course, on the urgency of the test. You may ask the radiologist for a tentative diagnosis, but getting a useful answer may be difficult, depending on how busy it is in the department and how many other matters need to be attended to.

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