IR(ME)R 2017 and Legal Duties

Study guide

The biggest topic in the radiography certificate, and the one where careful reading pays most. IR(ME)R 2017 assigns named duties to named roles, and almost every question is really asking "whose job is this?" — so the revision that works is learning the roles as a set rather than learning facts about radiography law in general.

The duty holders and their functions

The regulations define specific duty holders. Learn what each is responsible for, and equally what each is not.

• Each duty holder has a defined function; a single person can hold more than one role at once, which is exactly the situation the harder questions describe.
• The employer sits apart from the individual duty holders, carrying the framework duties rather than the per-exposure ones.
• Extended matching questions on duty holders and on registrant groups appear repeatedly. Practise matching a described action to the role entitled to perform it.

Justification and authorisation

Two separate steps, done by potentially different people, and the most commonly confused pair in the topic.

• Justification is the decision that the exposure carries sufficient net benefit; authorisation is the act that permits it to proceed.
• Who may carry out each step is defined, and depends on the employer’s procedures as well as on the regulations.
• Referral guidelines inform justification: a request that does not meet them is the scenario questions are built on.

The employer’s procedures and records

The employer must have written procedures covering defined matters, and must be able to evidence that they are followed.

• Know the kinds of matter the employer’s procedures must address — questions ask which procedure covers a described situation.
• Records are the evidence that a procedure was followed; a question about "what should have been recorded" is a question about which procedure applied.
• Extended matching questions pair a described scenario with the employer’s procedure or record that governs it.

The dental nurse’s role, carers and comforters

Where the certificate holder personally fits, plus the special cases that sit outside the ordinary patient pathway.

• The dental nurse’s role in dental radiography is defined by training and by the employer’s procedures, and working outside it is the failure mode questions describe.
• Carers and comforters are a distinct category with their own considerations, separate from both patients and staff.
• Non-medical imaging is treated differently again, and appears in questions precisely because it is the exception.

Accidental and unintended exposures

What must happen when something goes wrong. Sequence matters more than terminology here.

• An exposure that is much greater than intended, or given to the wrong person, triggers a defined response — know that a response is required and roughly what it involves.
• Investigation and notification are distinct steps with distinct triggers.
• Questions here usually describe an incident and ask what happens next, so rehearse the order rather than the definitions.

In the exam Read every stem for the role of the person in it. The same action can be correct for one duty holder and wrong for another, and the options are usually written so that a plausible-sounding answer is the right action performed by the wrong person. Work from the current IR(ME)R 2017 text and your employer’s own procedures, which are the documents the assessment is testing your familiarity with.