The following relates to the responsibilities of referrers in regard to ensuring MRI safety of patients. It is an excerpt from the MHRA guidelines for Clinical Use of MRI.
4.10.2 Patient referrals
…It is the responsibility of the referrer to identify those patients with implants and/or contraindications to MR before referral. However, the person taking the patient/volunteer into the MR ENVIRONMENT should be certain that all departmental safety checklists have been carried out and is entirely confident that is safe to so do.
Healthcare organisations should require referrers to supply sufficient medical data (such as previous diagnostic information or medical records) relevant to the MR examination requested by the referrer to enable the accepting clinician to decide on whether there is a hazard associated with the exam.
The accepting clinicians or supervising radiologists must be fully informed of the patient’s state of health and medical history when accepting requests for scans. Patients should be exposed only with the approval of a registered medical practitioner who should be satisfied either that the exposure is likely to contribute to the treatment of the patient or that it is part of a research project that has been approved by a research ethics committee.
For more information, please see our e-learning module for MRI referrers: https://www.mriphysics.scot.nhs.uk/teaching-training-material/
Further guidance for specific patient groups such as pregnant patients or patients with an incomplete medical history can be found here: https://www.mriphysics.scot.nhs.uk/mr-safety-guidance-for-patient-groups/