In Turkey, specific regulations for those working in radiology, radium and electrical treatment institutions can be found in Additional Article 1 of the Law No. 3153 on Radiology, Radium and Electrical Treatment and Other Physiotherapy Establishments and in the Regulation on Radiation Dose Limits and Working Principles of Personnel Working with ionizing Radiation Sources in Health Services.
Additionally, another time restriction on this type of work is found in the Regulation on the Regulation on the Work Required to be Performed for a Maximum of Seven and a Half Hours a Day or Less in Terms of Health Rules.
In the aforementioned article of the Turkish Labour Law, the weekly working time of the places where diagnosis, treatment and research establishments in Turkey are carried out with ionizing radiation and the personnel working in these works or procedures is limited to 35 hours. According to the aforementioned regulation, the radiation dose limits specified in the regulation to be issued by the Ministry of Health should also be taken into consideration within this period. The measures to be taken in order not to exceed the dose limits, the periods to be spent on leave and other measures to be taken in case of exceeding the dose limits will be included in the said regulation.
In accordance with Article 8ç of the aforementioned regulation, the personnel working with the radiation source must be employed within the dose limits specified in Article 7 of the regulation and within the period stipulated in the aforementioned Additional Article 1 of the law. In the event that these personnel are called to the duty shift outside of normal working hours, the time actually worked on the duty shift will be included in the weekly working time (35 hours).
The call-out shift, which is mentioned in the Regulation, is one of the types of shifts defined and regulated by the Inpatient Treatment establishments in Turkey, and is defined in Article 42 (A) of the Regulation under the concept of call-out shift (house watch) in general terms. Accordingly, in institutions where the number of specialists is less than the number of specialists to be on duty, but more than one, specialists are required to take turns on house watch. For this purpose, monthly house watch lists will be prepared. The house watch will be responsible for all administrative and medical requirements of the institution outside working hours. With this regulation, the house watch is obliged to make evening rounds, to report his/her location outside of working hours, and to come to the institution whenever invited.
When this regulation and the aforementioned regulation are considered together, for example, if a staff member who has completed 20 hours of his/her weekly working time is called to a call-out shift, that is, if he/she is called to the health institution for his/her work while on house watch and has worked for 3 hours for example, he/she will have completed 23 hours of his/her weekly working time and he/she will be able to work 12 hours more for that week, not 15 hours at most.
In Article 4 of the Regulation on the Work Requiring a Maximum of Seven and a Half Hours a Day or Less in Terms of Health Rules, work with radioactive and radioionizing substances is listed among the works that can only be worked for seven and a half hours. However, since the aforementioned legal regulation is a higher regulation, even though the aforementioned regulation allows for seven and a half hours of work per day, for example, when it comes to the application of 35 hours of work divided equally into 5 days of the week, the daily working time will only be 7 hours.
