Effect of Experience to Quality Control in Everyday Nuclear Medicine Radiopharmaceutical Kit Preparation

Objectives The goal of this research was to determine the effectiveness of the radiopharmacist’s teaching techniques to nuclear medicine interns and certified nuclear medicine/PET technologists in the preparation of radiopharmaceutical kits and quality control.

Methods Quality control data was compiled and compared for radiopharmaceutical kit preparation done by the radiopharmacist, nuclear medicine interns (monitored by the radiopharmacist) and certified nuclear medicine/PET technologists. For each category of staff, a set of 25 quality control attempts were reviewed for Myoview, MDP, and a miscellaneous category of seldom used kits. The data was compiled; an average of +/- 2 standard deviations were calculated.

Results After reviewing the data, it was determined that the radiopharmacist had the highest average for each radiopharmaceutical category with 98.7% +/- 1.0% bound, followed by the nuclear medicine interns (with radiopharmacist supervision) at 97.4% +/- 4.2% bound, and finally the Nuclear Medicine/PET technologists with 96.9% +/- 3.9% bound.

Conclusions The data shows that the radiopharmacist was the most proficient with labeling techniques, and he taught the interns and technologists to provide superb kit preparation and quality control, therefore offering patients a high quality radiopharmaceutical product. From this data, it was found that no further training is warrented by the radiopharmacist in the kit preparation and quality control of these compounded radiopharmaceuticals.