[Management of human resources, materials, and organization processes in radioprotection]

The radiologist must learn to face daily management responsibilities and therefore he/she needs the relevant knowledge. Aside from the mechanisms of management accounting, which differ only slightly from similar analysis methods used in other centers, the managing radiologist (the person in charge) is directly responsible for planning, organizing, coordinating and controlling radiation protection, a major discipline characterizing diagnostic imaging. We will provide some practical management hints, keeping in mind that radiation protection must not be considered a simple (or annoying) technical task, but rather an extraordinary positive element for the radiologist's cultural differentiation and professional identity.

The managing radiologist can use the theory and practice of management techniques successfully applied in business, customizing them to the ethics and economics of health care. Meeting the users' needs must obviously prevail on balancing the budget from both a logical and an accounting viewpoints, since non-profit organizations are involved. In radiological practice, distinguishing the management of human from structural resources (direct funding is not presently available) permits to use internal benchmarking for the former and controlled acquisition and planned replacement of technologies in the latter, obviously after evaluation of specific indicators and according to the relevant laws and technical guidelines.

Managing human resources means safeguarding the patient, the operator and the population, which can be achieved or improved using benchmarking in a diagnostic imaging department. The references for best practice will be set per tabulas based on the relevant laws and (inter)national guidelines. The physical-technical and bureaucratic-administrative factors involved will be considered as process indices to evaluate the gap from normal standards. Among the different elements involved in managing structural resources, the appropriate acquisition of a piece of radiological equipment is important from both a radiation protection and an economic viewpoints. In the acquisition process, the first and the last steps (technology assessment and planned replacement, respectively) are specifically important for the radiologist and play a major role in global management. In both cases the radiologist must be able to lay out autonomous and objective working projects, also using evaluation algorithms.