Walter Reed May Have Exposed Patients, Staff To Nuclear Material

WASHINGTON — The military's flagship hospital has acknowledged it mishandled two packages of radioactive material in May, possibly exposing staff and patients to elevated radiation levels.

Spokesman Chuck Dasey said Thursday that Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington doesn't dispute the allegations made by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The commission said the packages sat beneath a lobby counter for nearly two days after they were delivered.

Dasey says the hospital has since reinforced its nuclear medicine safety program and retrained staff on the proper handling of radioactive material.

The packages contained radioactive material used to treat and diagnose ailments such as cancer and heart disease.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said no harm has been reported from the incident.

Comments

[Demidan]

11:20 AM on 08/27/2010

What no plum bum bub?

[DK in MS]

11:03 AM on 08/27/2010

You mean *radioactive* material - unless someone was toting a reactor around, that is.

[amaycatbaker]

10:41 AM on 08/27/2010

Poor staff and patients, mistakes happen, this one could harm others. Not good.

[NoPCZone]

10:02 AM on 08/27/2010

Nuclear Med doses are low level, are shielded for shipment, are very small in quantity and have very a short half life.
A non story except they should be more careful.

If this were a shipment of seed radioactive implants it would be more of an issue.

[Robert MacEwan]

08:14 AM on 08/27/2010

SMR250 smear samples anyone? Wipe surveys being conducted as required?

[ThinkCreeps]

07:43 AM on 08/27/2010

Are we to believe these medicines travel without being packed in radiation-proof boxes? What a non story.

[tiredofpc]

04:34 AM on 08/27/2010

OK, stop with the VA and military hospitals bashing. You forget, or probably never knew, that the VA has implemented electronic records, controlled formularies for medications, intensive reworking of hundreds of it's hospital facilities all in the last 2 decades. They are dealing with the thousands of new OEF/OIF veterans due to the non-stop 9 years of wars. The military hospitals are doing the same, except that their staff members are frequently rotated out to the down range hospitals where they take care of thousands of wounded and ill, many of them local nationals. All of this takes an enormous amount of money, time, effort and coordination and is paid for on a year to year budget depending on the whims of Congress and whichever political party has the most clout at the time. These are not for profit institutions who's first question is "what kind of insurance do you have." They're staffed by well educated, excellent practitioners of the medical and nursing arts and to simply generically lambast all VA and military medical institutions is stupid and short sighted. Any hospital in this country, or, for that matter, any business can have something happen like not getting a delivery to the right person/area at the right time. I'm sure there's serious butt chewing and revamping of protocols going on at WRAMC over this mess.

[Cheapthrills]

09:51 AM on 08/27/2010

You forgot to mention that the VA has federal, over-inflated salaries and personnel.

[NoPCZone]

10:06 AM on 08/27/2010

I know for a fact that civil servants working in federal healthcare are paid LESS than comparable civilian workers, but tend to have better benefits.

[bgofca]

03:18 AM on 08/27/2010

i sincerely hope that all of the people involved will be safe and recovered from any injury soon.

[trying this again]

02:26 AM on 08/27/2010

Walter Reed is and always has been scary. It was apples an oranges with Bethesda right down the street and Portsmouth a few hours down.

[MRb1000]

02:11 AM on 08/27/2010

I bet this was army hospital. Oh how did I guess. They could careless about occupational health and protection to the public. They need to turn this over to the Air Force. Bioenvironmental engineering!

[scyntar]

02:03 AM on 08/27/2010

Geez-O-Pete "May have" or "Did?" Sometimes (many times, media - take note) there's TMI without sufficient fact. That's called "speculating." Quit whipping the froth. Gads >:(

[WhatDaBleep]

01:57 AM on 08/27/2010

Not surprising - the US government has a history of exposing its citizens to dangerous materials to study the results of those exposures.

[thawalkingman]

11:59 PM on 08/26/2010

The sad thing is that probably wasn't the worst thing they did to patients during that period, just the most 'newsworthy'.

[TopTigerette]

11:07 PM on 08/26/2010

Beyond this issue, the Veterans' Hospitals are notorious for poor or haphazard services. Why would anybody want the federal govt to get more involved in the oversight of personal and family health care? It's a bureaucracy. It doesn't respond quickly to individuals' needs. It's the government! Get them the heck out of our health care and hospitals.

[ipresumelikely]

04:03 AM on 08/27/2010

Corporations care even less about your health than the government. What did you expect with Republicans and corporatist Dems in office?

[TopTigerette]

08:52 AM on 08/27/2010

It's not that anybody but you "cares" about your health -- the govt or the corporations. The world is not a "caring" place. It's that you must have recourse, there must be competition, and you must have the ability to sue for damages. The health care entity has to be accountable to YOU, their CUSTOMER, not the faceless bureaucracies of government.

[sizogee]

10:51 PM on 08/26/2010

The reason this happened is because rules about handling this particular type of radioactive material are lax, and ill-enforced.

The reason the rules are lax and ill-enforced is because this stuff really isn't that big a threat.

So some things ought to be re-examined to keep this from happening again, but it's not really a big deal. I understand that radioactive == scary, but I have a feeling you'd get more radiation if you visited Denver for a couple of days (it's naturally radioactive).

[Cantinflas]

10:59 PM on 08/26/2010

The material was also probably in shielded packing, as well.

[AlexInOklahoma]

11:22 AM on 08/27/2010

The rules are not lax at all. The rules can be pretty overbearing at times, but it is not all that difficult. I looked at the actual NRC report (anyone else go to the trouble??) and the delivery person allowed someone not authorized to sign for the box (a 2Ci Mo99 'generator' used for multiple small doses, aka a 'pig' that gets milked, in trade-talk). If things are ill-enforced, why is this minor thing being enforced? Eh? I have been on the receiving end of many inspections, and I see this as Reed being the one that reported the mishap - could easily have been 'covered-up', but yet it wasn't. It appears to be self-identified, and NRC saw that and also saw that Walter Reed was reminding its folks how to treat the things. The health-physicist at Walter Reed did the right thing - you knew that though, right? I am just not getting the lax/ill-enforced bit; makes no sense at all to a person who has worked within NRC purview before.

Here's the actual 'report' -> http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2010/20100504en.html

Enjoy the actual details :-) Generator delivered on Saturday and located the following Monday - it was searched for as soon as was realized that it was 'missing'. - kudos to the folks in that Dept for knowing/following the regs and knowing what to do when things out of their control happen!