Knowledge, perception and practice of proper collimation in Paediatric chest x-ray among IIUM undergraduate medical imaging students

Chest X-ray examination is important in diagnosing medical illnesses associated with the lungs, heart, and chest wall. Chest X-ray also has been used as a baseline imaging in Medical Imaging. Thus, a large number of chest X-ray examinations are requested by the clinicians especially in infants. Given this situation, a radiographer plays a vital role in minimizing the patient dose while producing a diagnostically acceptable radiograph. Principle of ALARA and proper beam collimation can be implemented in reducing patient exposure. This is because collimation can control the size of the beam reaching the patient’s body part of examination which will affect the amount of scatter radiation produced. Larger collimation will increase the production of scatter radiation, thus increasing the patient dose, and reducing the image quality. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the knowledge, perception, and practice level of year 3 and year 4 undergraduate students of IIUM Medical Imaging on proper collimation in paediatric chest X-ray. A set of questionnaire was developed and distributed among the respondents via the Google Form. It was comprised on four sections which were respondents’ demographic data, knowledge, perception, and practice. There were 9 male and 37 female respondents and all of them fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The level of knowledge related to collimation in Medical Imaging among the respondents obtained was significantly high with a percentage of 91.3%. This indicates that the respondents are well informed with the collimation techniques and terms. Besides, five Likert Scale questions were used in evaluating the perception level of the respondents on the effect of collimation in paediatric imaging. A positive perception of 82.6% (38) was portrayed by the respondents. In addition, the level of practice on proper collimation observed was moderate. This might be due to the respondents’ lack of skill and experience in the clinical setting. However, this study has revealed that there is no significant relationship between these three elements as the p-value obtained was 0.065 which is more than 0.05. Based on this study, the level of knowledge, perception, and practice of the IIUM Medical Imaging undergraduate students on proper collimation in paediatric chest X-ray was determined. Given this data, further initiatives or programmes can be implemented to maintain or enhance the aforementioned level in producing a competent IIUM Medical Imaging fresh graduate. Thus, this can help in improving the overall quality of the health care delivery system