As part of a new proposal presented in the US Office of Veteran’s Affairs, nurses without adequate training on radiation imaging machines (such as PET scans) would still be allowed to perform these procedures. Before, nurses had to go through hours of training to become registered radiological technologists to get the proper certification in order to operate these machines since they risked exposing patients to high doses of radiation. Even though this idea was proposed to speed up waiting times for veterans, many are saying that this VA proposal is putting veterans at risk of dangerous radiation because these nurses aren’t familiar enough with the technology to administer it safely.

 

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