Radiology Quality and Education Team

Digital radiography (DR) is an advanced imaging technique that is becoming more popular in the hospital setting. Over the last two years, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta has purchased three DR systems for our facilities. This technology provides exceptional detail to certain images however, the learning curve for staff is huge and thus quite a bit of time has been devoted to not only education but the resolution of image quality issues with the vendor. DR systems use a different technology to take images compared to traditional units and thus staff must learn an entirely new technique in order to obtain high quality images. Not to mention that most vendors are not educated on the needs of pediatric facilities and the differences in our protocols compared to adult facilities. If your system is considering the purchase of a DR system please ensure that you negotiate ample staff training and develop a working relationship with the vendor. This steps taken up front will really help in implementing this new technology.