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08 Dec 2021
Odyssey Equipment Catalog module
Equipment Catalog, Odyssey Software, Radiation Safety Versant Physics 0 comment

Odyssey “How To” Series: Equipment Catalog Module

Join us for this week’s edition of our Odyssey How To series with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters. We discuss how to carry out certain functions of the Odyssey Equipment Catalog module and answer some of your frequently asked questions. Scroll down to view the full transcript.

Odyssey is a radiation safety software suite designed to help RSOs, EHS managers, and Radiation Safety Specialists manage affordable and efficient programs.

KB 00:11: Welcome to Part 10 of our 12-week How-to series highlighting Odyssey Radiation Safety Software. Today we’re back with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters to talk about the Equipment Catalog module. We’ll be addressing some frequently asked questions we get about the module’s functionality and its use in managing equipment inventory. Katelyn, do you mind going through an overview of the module before we get to our frequently asked questions?

Katelyn 00:30: Of course, KB. The Equipment Catalog module is 1 of 12 modules of Odyssey’s radiation safety software suite, which is what we’re looking at right now. It’s very customizable and can be used to track any type of equipment whether it’s something in your radiation safety or EH&S program. If I navigate into the module and into the Equipment section, which we’re going to be focusing on today, we can see that for this example or demonstration account we have the equipment types of survey meter, probe, protective apron, and thyroid collar. And these are those customizable groups. This is going to look entirely different depending on your account and what your needs are for your program.

If I select one of these names for a piece of equipment’s name, it’s going to take me to its profile which is what we’re currently looking at right now. I selected a survey meter. The boxes at the top of the profile for the survey meter are going to be the same as all other types of equipment, these are some pretty standard default fields. They are serial number, which is going to be the Unique ID for it in the system, the site or location that it’s at, an owner or responsible person, that’s Leann here, you can optionally associate it with a permit, and there is a last updated field which Odyssey automatically updates for you. Down below, where it says template fields survey meter, these are going to be customizable fields specific to that type of equipment, to that survey meter. And these are going to change depending on what kind of equipment you’re looking at and is something that is different depending on the equipment profile, which we’ll see in just a second.

For survey meters on this example account, we’ve decided to keep track of manufacturer, model, and some calibration information which you can see Calibrated by and the Calibration Due Date here. But if I go to a different kind of profile, we’re going to filter our results to some Protective Aprons here, we can see like I said that at the top here there is those same fields as what we saw on the survey meter. But down below it says Template Fields: Protective Apron now, and while there is some overlap, because you can, like with manufacturer here, we have different information for the other two fields, those being Lead Equivalency and some inspection due date information.

KB 03:07: So how do these templates get set up?

Katelyn 03:10: This is something that happens during what we call the implementation process of Odyssey. Versant staff are going to work with you to figure out what kinds of equipment you have for your program and what information you’d like to keep track of for them in Odyssey itself. We will then set up the groups and that information for you, those fields, but Administrators anytime later can edit them, add or remove any of those as need be.

KB 03:36: And what is that update button down there next to the calibration due date for?

Katelyn 03:40: The update button right here allows you to update any due dates like this calibration due date very quickly. For the survey meters on this account, we have the calibrations set up to be required annually. If I select this button right now, it’s going to populate with today’s date. And if I select Update it’s going to add a year to that date as it’s trying to project out when that next calibration due date is. You can also actually put in whatever date if the calibration didn’t happen today.

The due date itself also shows up in your scheduling calendar and will send you reminders that show up as Alerts in Odyssey.

KB 04:16: That sounds useful. And if I have a calibration certificate or other document that relates to my equipment, is there a place to store that?

Katelyn 04:25: Yes, if you scroll down on an equipment’s profile, which we can do for this meter here, there is a spot at the bottom of the page that has an Upload Equipment Document button. I can select that and upload something from the Document Library of Odyssey or my local computer, as well as I can see all of the other documents that were previously uploaded.

KB 04:46: Okay great. I just have one more question. Looking at the tabs on the equipment’s profile, I know we’ve described some of the others in our How-To series, but that Checkout tab seems to be unique to equipment. Could you describe what that’s for?

Katelyn 05:02: Absolutely. One of the key differences between the Equipment Catalog and Machine Management modules is that equipment tends to be a little bit more portable, changing hands or ownership more frequently. And you need to keep track of that in much more detail than you would for a larger machine that is mostly stationary.

We added in the checkout tab for this purpose, and it shows you a history of who’s checked out this equipment, where to, and when they checked it back in. We can see for this survey meter here, Leann has checked out the equipment to a certain building as well as checked it back in. And those are logged on the history, and we also have tools to create a new check out here if we’d like to.

KB 05:47: Awesome! And that wraps up our list of frequently asked questions for the Equipment Catalog module. Thanks, Katelyn, for walking through the module with me and clarifying how users can use it to manage their equipment inventory.

Katelyn: 05:57: Thanks for having me, KB.

Schedule an in-depth demo with our Odyssey team to discuss how the software can assist you with your radiation safety management needs.

02 Dec 2021
Odyssey's Canvas module
Odyssey Software, Radiation Safety Versant Physics 0 comment

Odyssey “How To” Series: Canvas Module

Join us for this week’s edition of our Odyssey How To series with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters. We discuss how to carry out certain functions of the Canvas module and answer some of your frequently asked questions.

Odyssey is a radiation safety software suite designed to help RSOs, EHS managers, and Radiation Safety Specialists manage affordable and efficient programs.

Schedule an in-depth demo with our Odyssey team to discuss how the software can assist you with your radiation safety management needs.

24 Nov 2021
Odyssey training module
Odyssey Software, Radiation Safety, Training Versant Physics 0 comment

Odyssey “How To” Series: Training Module

Join us for another round of our Odyssey How To series with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters. We discuss how to carry out certain functions of the Training module and answer some of your frequently asked questions. Scroll down to view the full transcript.

Odyssey is a radiation safety software suite designed to help RSOs, EHS managers, and Radiation Safety Specialists manage affordable and efficient programs.

KB 00:09: Welcome back to our 12-week How-to series highlighting Odyssey Radiation Safety Software. We’re back once again with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters to talk about the Training module. We’ll be addressing some frequently asked questions we get about the module’s functionality as well as its use in training personnel. But before we get into our frequently asked questions, Katelyn do you mind giving us an overview of the Training module?

Katelyn 00:33: Absolutely, KB. The Training module is 1 of 12 modules of Odyssey, which is our radiation safety software suite. It’s been developed so that administrators either for a radiation safety program or EH&S programs can easily create training courses for their own personnel. We’ve seen these courses used either as the sole method of instruction or as a supplement to live, in-person training.

If I navigate into the module, there are going to be 3 main sections for us: Manage Users, Manage Courses, and Results. If I go to Manage Courses, we can actually take a look at one of the example courses that we have added to this demo account called Medical X-ray.

The left-hand side has a customizable description of that course, and this is something that an administrator would add. And the right-hand side will show us a breakdown of the course. Each of these training courses is broken down into as many modules and chapters as you would like, and you can name each of those as well as have content like lecture videos, documents, and a quiz form for each of the chapters.

KB 01:42: And how do admins go about creating these courses? Also, what kind of content are you able to include?

Katelyn 01:48: Yeah, so you go about creating these courses from the previous page under Manage Courses, and so instead of selecting one of our existing courses here you’d hit the big New Course button. After that, you’re going to be prompted to upload content for your course; each chapter will have its own content. Chapter 1 that we’re looking at has lectures that we have previously uploaded to the chapter as well as there is a supplemental document for this chapter. And you would go about adding those initially from a page that looks like this one right here. Right now I’m editing the chapter but this is the same form you’re going to see when creating a new chapter. You’re going to have the chapter title that you can enter or edit, a description that you can put in, and then a box here that you can click and drag or click to upload any of those resources. If you have a video, you can add a PowerPoint, documents like PDFs, or Word Documents.

And then at the bottom, we’re going to have the existing resources that are already part of this chapter. The two videos that we saw are listed right here that have been previously uploaded, and then that document that we viewed is this document right here. I can edit or delete any of those if need be.

KB 03:07: That’s great. Is there a similar process for the actual quiz creation?

Katelyn 03:13: When we’re creating quizzes we have some tools within the Training module to go about creating those. I’m going to go to this Chapter 2 quiz. Right now what we’re looking at is the student view of the quiz, there are all multiple choice questions for this one and this is the format of what they’re going to see. But an administrator either creating or editing one of these quizzes is going to have this view here where you have multiple buttons. You can add multiple-choice questions to your quiz, True/False, short answer, or something called a Worksheet, which is going to be a form from our Forms module that you associate with this quiz. And once you do select one of those buttons you will have a question added to your quiz that looks like this. You will type in what the actual question is, what options you want this student to be able to select from, and the correct answer.

KB 04:07: I see that there are some other settings right there at the top of the page. What exactly are those settings for?

Katelyn 04:12: That’s a great question. The passing percentage right here is the percent of questions that the student needs to get correct in order for this quiz to be marked as completed, or passed. If the student does not pass that particular quiz, there is a lockout period which is optional. We do set this for our quizzes. The purpose for that is to encourage the student to go back and review that material prior to taking the quiz again so they’re not just taking it over and over again until they pass it. You can also set the number of attempts that they’re allowed to do for each quiz. The -1 that you see here is unlimited. We allow them to take that over and over again even though there is a lockout period, but you could set this to 2 or 3 attempts, whatever you would like.

The final box is Questions Per Quiz. This allows you to create a pool of questions that each quiz attempt will pull from. If you want to, as an administrator, add in like 30 different questions for this quiz, but when a student takes it you want it to pull maybe 10 of those questions out, you can put 10 here, and then it will pull from that overall pool of questions.

And finally, we have this checkbox “Show Answers on Failure.” If a student does not pass that quiz you can then determine with this checkbox if you want to show them the correct answers then.

KB 05:34: And am I able to see what students answer for the quizzes and track their progress on my end?

Katelyn 05:44: Yes. Let me go back out to the other two sections that we have not viewed so far in Training. And those are going to be Manage Users and Results.

Briefly taking a look at that Manage Users section for that same course we were just looking at, the example Medical X-ray course, we can see the students who are assigned that course, when they were assigned it, when it’s due for them to complete, whether or not they completed it, and we can also take a look at their course completion certificate from here if we wanted to. We can optionally also unassign any of them, or assign additional Odyssey users at the bottom of this page.

But to more directly answer your question, in addition to this section, we have the Training Results. The Training Results section has each of your courses listed out, the students that have taken it at any point in time, as well as, if you select one of their names, you can view how they responded to each of the quizzes that are included within that course. We have Vincent Goble here, who has previously taken the Medical X-ray course, and his scores tab has all of the chapters that he has completed. So, so far, he’s only completed Chapter 1. And we can see what each of the questions were for that Chapter 1 quiz, how he responded, as well as the correct answer. And we can see one of them here we can see he did not answer correctly even though he did pass, and that’s this one in red and it’ll be labeled very clearly for you.

This is a very easy way to track progress for each of your students as they progress through the course. But you could also just wait until they complete the course because at the end of that course each student is going to have available to them a course completion certificate, which they could provide to you to keep in your records as proof of their completion.

KB 07:31: That sounds very easy and efficient! And that wraps up our list of frequently asked questions for the Training module. Thanks Katelyn, for walking through it with me and clarifying how users can use it to train personnel in their Radiation Safety or EHS program. We’ll see you next week for a discussion on Odyssey’s Waste Management module.

Schedule an in-depth demo with our Odyssey team to discuss how the software can assist you with your radiation safety management needs.

10 Nov 2021
Permits lock icon on Odyssey platform
Odyssey Software, Permits, Radiation Safety Versant Physics 0 comment

Odyssey “How To” Series: Permits Module

Join us for our 6th edition of the Odyssey How To series with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters. We discuss how to carry out certain functions of the Permits module and answer some of your frequently asked questions. Scroll down to view a full transcript of the discussion.

Odyssey is a radiation safety software suite designed to help RSOs, EHS managers, and Radiation Safety Specialists manage affordable and efficient programs.

KB: Welcome to Part 6 of our 12-week How-to series highlighting Odyssey Radiation Safety Software. Today we’re back with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters to talk about the Permits module. We’ll be addressing some frequently asked questions about the module’s functionality and its use in enforcing permits and licenses. To get started, Katelyn can you give us an overview of the Permits module?

Katelyn: Absolutely, KB. The permits module is one of 12 modules of Odyssey that focus on radiation safety. It allows you to enter in any existing permits and licenses you have to actively enforce them when you add radioactive material inventory into Inventory Tracking, machines into the Machine Management, or Equipment into Equipment Catalog. By enforcement, I mean when you go to actually enter any of those inventory items into Odyssey, it’s going to check against the permit to see what types of inventory are allowed, where the inventory can be, authorized users, and in the case of radioactive materials, the allowed possession limits as well. If you do try to add inventory to Odyssey that conflicts with a permit, the software is going to prevent you from doing that and the addition of that inventory and let you know why.

To see an example of that, I can navigate into the Permits module and we’re going to go and focus on the Permits section of this today. This module will support as few or as many permits as you would like. Each of them has their own profile, which I can get to if select one by name. There’s a general tab of information, you can name the Permit, it will tell you what types of information it is enforcing within Odyssey—this one here has isotopes and survey meters that it’s covering—and issue an expiration date, as well as you can formally name some individuals for the permit.

Other important tabs that we have are the Authorized Labs tab. This doesn’t have to be a literal lab, but it will be any area that’s going to be authorized to house the materials that are authorized by the permit.  An Authorized User tab… so these could be authorized users or other individuals that relate to the inventory, as well as if it’s a radioactive material permit, you’re going to have this isotope tab where you can list out all those isotopes as well as their possession limits.    

KB: One of the questions that we are frequently asked is if the permits module can aid in compliance with other conditions listed on permits and licenses such as the need to survey or inventory on a certain frequency or wear dosimetry and PPE.

Katelyn: This module does support that.  We have, if I scroll down a little bit, an Authorized Conditions section where you can enter any of that information in as an authorized condition. And then when you go to perform a permit audit, which you can also do in Odyssey, these conditions can be referenced, and any necessary non-compliances or corrective actions cited in that audit that relate to the condition.

KB:  Good to know! I see a couple of buttons on the profile for reports. Are the authorized conditions included in the reports?

Katelyn: Yes, they are. Let me go ahead and select Permit Report and we’ll go take a look at that. To actually see the report, I will select the Generate Report button, and it will load at the bottom of the page for us. And depending on what types of information are enforced by that permit, you’re going to have different information on the Permit Report, as you might expect.

You’ll have a table of Maximum Activity Limits if you have radioactive material, if you have equipment or machines that are on the permit you will have tables for those, as well as an Authorized Locations section which is going to cover that Authorized Lab tab that we saw. To directly answer your question, KB, the Permit Conditions section here is referencing those Authorized Conditions that we just saw on the profile, and here will also break it down by category for you so you can see that information.

KB: Going through the module, I’ve been trying to think of how we could enter our information. We have one radioactive materials license, but internally we also assign allowed possession limits to each of our sites. Would we be able to structure the permits this way in this module?

Katelyn: That’s a great question and a pretty common use case for the Permits module. What I suggest in that scenario is to add one permit that has your overall license limits, and then one or more other permits for individual locations, and on those, you can designate the allowed activities for those locations. That way you can monitor both your overall possession limit and what you’ve internally assigned to each of your locations.

KB: Gotcha! Alright, one last question. If I need to change any of those limits, or authorized users, locations, or any other information that’s listed on the permit, can I do so?

Katelyn: Yes, so let me navigate back to the Permit Profile, it is linked from the report if I select the name. And any user with the appropriate permissions within Odyssey can edit the information for this permit at any time by selecting this pencil icon. When you do that, you’re going to see at the bottom of the edit form something called Make Amendment. And there are a few other places in this profile where you can edit information where this is also displayed. If I select this checkbox, it creates a formal amendment for that change which will be logged in the history for that permit. That lives on the Permit Amendments tab and going to that we can see some historical ones that were added in for different changes that occurred in the past. And this is really great to always have to reference if you ever need to figure out where a change occurred or when.

KB: And that wraps up our list of frequently asked questions for the Permits module. Thanks, Katelyn, for walking through the module with me and answering some frequently asked questions about how Odyssey can help manage an organization’s permits.

Katelyn: Thanks for having me, KB.

Schedule an in-depth demo with our Odyssey team to discuss how the software can assist you with your radiation safety management needs.

03 Nov 2021
Odyssey incident management dashboard
Inventory Tracking, Odyssey Software Versant Physics 0 comment

Odyssey “How To” Series: Incident Management Module

Join us for week 5 of our Odyssey How To Series with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters, where we discuss how to carry out certain functions of the Incident Management module and answer some of your frequently asked questions.

Odyssey is a radiation safety software suite designed to help RSOs, EHS managers, and Radiation Safety Specialists manage affordable and efficient programs.

KB 00:10 Welcome to Part 5 of our 12-week How To Series highlighting Odyssey Radiation Safety Software. Today we’re back with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters to talk about the Incident Management module. We’ll be addressing some frequently asked questions we get about the module’s functionality and its use in recording incidents. To get started, Katelyn, can you give us some background on the Incident Management module?

Katelyn 00:30: Absolutely. The Incident Management module is the most recent addition to the Odyssey Radiation Safety Software suite. It’s located in the bottom right-hand corner here. It can be utilized for your radiation safety program as well as more generally for environmental health and safety. It allows you to track incidents such as radiation events, injury, illness, equipment damage. And if I navigate into the module itself, we can see it has a dashboard that is very similar to the Personnel Dosimetry module, which allows you to see at-a-glance the number of open and closed cases that you have for your account, a breakdown of those incidents over time, as well as a subtype distribution for what kind of incidents are occurring in those total numbers for you.

KB 01:26: So is this like the Personnel Dosimetry dashboard in that I can also edit which widgets are displayed?

Katelyn 01:33: Yes. By popular request, we actually built this to have a lot of those similar features. And if I select this gear icon, I can add additional widgets via this Widget Select. I can remove any. So, this is a bulletin one here that allows you to add some news memos for users to see. But if I don’t want to utilize that I can always remove any widget as well. I can click and drag to move them around; I can also change the individual settings I want to see.  I just added in an example incident here, so we’ve knocked this down to zero days since the last incident. But I can also filter that to different types of incidents, different sites, as well as other graphs such as incidents over time allow you to select the time period and other settings.

KB 02:10: Well, that’s great! Um, I see on this page that the incidents are broken down into something called subtypes. Are these built-in options or are they customizable?

Katelyn 02:31: That is a great question. So, these are customizable, and if I use the navigational menus at the top of the page, I can go to a section called Case Subtypes. And this demo account has a variety of options that have been added. We have different injuries such as burns, chemical injuries, fractures, as well as some other items such as illness, fire, radiation event, near misses, workplace hazards, and equipment damage. And these are completely added as just examples. They can be customized for your program and the line of work that you might encounter.

KB 03:12: And how would I go about adding one of these incidents to the module?

Katelyn 03:19: Similarly to how we go to the case subtype, we can also go and use this menu to go to the Add Case screen. And from here I have a form I can fill out about the incident or case, as we refer to them in the software. I can select who the affected user was, so I’ll select our example person Ted. The type, so we have them broken down into just general and injury for this particular account, but I can get more specific with these subtypes. So, I’ll choose a Workplace Hazard. We also have the ability to enter in a site, and this is going to refer to the different sites in Odyssey which are also utilized elsewhere outside of the module. And a location description, if I want to get more specific I can go ahead and enter any text description as to where this incident actually occurred. The Incident date, I’ll just say today. And then we have a descriptive element section. This just helps you very quickly write out what actually happened. These are prepopulated statements that we set up during implementation with different categories. So you can see there are ones that pertain to damage, contact tracing, radiation exposures, insurance information. All of these are customizable phrases you can enter in.

So, since this one here was about a Workplace Hazard, I’ll actually go in and put something realistic here. Let’s go in and see our options for workplace hazards. There could be damage as a workplace hazard, so I’ll say that there was damage that’s internal and can be repaired on-site and that it is covered by insurance. So it just populates these different descriptions into here. As well as I can come in and I can also enter text if I want to. And then you can select the Save button and it’s going to add a case profile for you. This is where from here on out you how you go about adding information to the case and updating it during the lifetime of the event.

If I go back, I’m going to go to one of our cases that we have already added because it just has more example information for us to look at here. So here is a case on Equipment Damage. I can see I was the recorder for this, it was a general incident, it occurred in Building 5, more specifically in an office. And we see that Chris Wilson here was affected.

So, down below, this is where we have two tabs, one called Evidence, and once called Responses. The Evidence tab is intended for an administrator or someone who is coming in here and initially adding the case to Odyssey. For this particular incident, we can see that it was a computer that was damaged, and we have an image of that piece of equipment that has been uploaded.

The Responses tab is intended more for the affected users, so Chris here, or any other person that might have been involved that you need to get a response from. So this would be the admin coming in and requesting a response from any affected personnel to get their feedback on the event. And Chris’ response was requested, we can see that he had a response required by date of October 1st. He did come in here and respond saying that he had sent in the computer for repair. This is also a tab or area where you can come in and upload documents as well. So, if he has you know a repair document or invoice that is related to this, he can also add that to his response in this Files column.

KB 07:11: Well that seems really useful for tracking the resolution of incidents that need to be formally logged. I do have one last question though. How does the individual know when their response is requested?

Katelyn 07:19: That is another great question. We do have an alerts system that is going to be software-wide within Odyssey. And so, responses do fall into that category. You receive alerts through the Alerts and Taskbar that I just selected in the lower right-hand corner. There is an alerts section where post-it notes pop up with posted information; this is an example one about RAM Use Cards. But if you were to have your response required for a case, you would receive a notification of that via a post-it note alert like this, with text saying that your response is required and also linking to this particular case.

You can optionally also opt for email alerts. So, if you’re not coming into the software frequently and you still want to make sure you’re on top of all of those notifications you can get those emailed to your email address of choice as well.

KB 08:14: Well that sounds great! And that actually wraps up our list of frequently asked questions for the Incident Management module. Thank you again Katelyn for walking through the module with me and clarifying how users can use it to record incidents in their radiation safety or their EHS program.

Katelyn 08:29: Thanks for having me, KB.  

Schedule an in-depth demo with our Odyssey team to discuss how the software can assist you with your radiation safety management needs.

01 Mar 2021
Incident Management for Radiation Incidents
Incident Management, Odyssey Software, Radiation Safety Versant Physics 0 comment

Incident Management for Radiation Accidents

Any workplace, regardless of industry, can be affected by an emergency or accident. However, if your facility works with man-made ionizing radiation sources such as medical diagnostic equipment or radiopharmaceuticals, it is important you prepare for potential radiation incidents to ensure a swift and appropriate response should something occur.

Workplace radiation incidents can include:

  • Radioactive material spills or releases
  • Contamination of personnel
  • Malfunctioning safety controls
  • Lost, stolen, or orphaned radioactive material sources
  • Equipment leaks (ex. Industrial equipment)
  • Transportation incidents or accidents
  • Misuse of medical source materials or industrial radiographic material

While clean up methods and preventative measures will vary depending on the type and severity of the incident, how you collect and track information regarding the incident should be standard across your organization.

Identifying How the Accident Occurred


The first step in responding to a workplace radiation incident is understanding how the accident occurred in the first place. Was there any missing signage in the area where the accident occurred? Were ALARA principles being followed by all personnel? Has the equipment been properly maintained and inspected regularly? Even accidents that occur due to simple human error should be noted and tracked, especially if similar incidents happen regularly.

woman with yellow safety helmet and goggles on ipad

Identifying the Type of Radiation Exposure During an Incident

During a radiation incident, it is important to determine if and how an employee was exposed. The risk from exposure varies depending on the energy the radionuclide emits, the type of radiation (alpha, beta, gamma, x-rays), whether the exposure was external or internal (via injection, eating, drinking, etc.), how long people were near the radioactive material, and more.

Tracking this information is important because of the potential health effects that can result from radiation exposure. Exposure to low levels of radiation, such as the amount found in our environment (See Background Radiation Sources), will not typically have immediate health effects. However, it can contribute to overall cancer risk over a long period of time. Exposure to high doses of ionizing radiation can result in health problems ranging from skin burns and radiation sickness to cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Follow-Up


Sometimes the effects of a radiation incident or exposure will not be known right away. As time goes on, it can be difficult to recall the details of the incident with enough clarity to implement preventative measures. In these situations it is recommended that RSOs and EHS managers utilize an Incident Management software to not only identify and track the initial incident, but to use it to look back on what occurred when creating new policies and procedures.

Steps to Protect Against Future Exposure Incidents


Whether your facility handles man-made radiation or naturally occurring radioactive material, there are certain steps that can be taken to protect workers from future exposure after an incident has occurred.

  • Implement countermeasures such as time, distance, and shielding

Time, Distance, and Shielding are considered the standard measures for minimizing occupational radiation exposure. Limiting the amount of time spent around a radiation source reduces the overall dose from the radiation source. Similarly, the intensity and dose decrease the farther away a person is from a radiation source. Shielding measures including barriers made of lead, concrete, or water can provide protection from penetrating radiation such as gamma rays.  

  • Radiation Safety Training
    One of the best ways to keep accidents from occurring is by training employees on the basic principles of radiation safety and the risks of mishandling radiation producing equipment or radiopharmaceuticals. It is important to provide refresher training periodically, especially in light of an incident, to ensure employees are up to date and prepared.

  • Regular monitoring, inspections, and facility audits/surveys are also ideal ways to eliminate radiation accidents and ensure everything is operating smoothly.

Implementing safety measures and following ALARA principles will help decrease the number of incidents that occur, however it probably won’t eliminate them entirely. To ensure the safety of both yourself and others in your facility, it is vital that radiation incidents be attended to promptly. Furthermore, it is important that such incidents be carefully recorded and tracked to prohibit the incident from occurring again. Utilizing Incident Management software is a great way to help you document accidents, emergencies, and illnesses, view trends in data to identify problem areas, and help you prepare and prevent future incidents from happening.

Versant Physics radiation safety software suite Odyssey is now offering the Incident Management module. The module, which can be used individually or in conjunction with any of Odyssey’s radiation safety modules, provides RSOs and EHS professionals the ability to monitor and track a variety of workplace incidents, including radiation safety events.

odyssey incident management module on mobile devices

The module features a user-friendly dashboard for easy tracking and analysis. Users can also efficiently follow-up with open cases and analyze trends in reported incidents, making it easier to create a safe, compliant workplace for you and your staff.

Contact sales@versantphysics.com to schedule a demo or visit our Odyssey page for more information on functionality and pricing.

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