Abstract
In our school, education of radiological protection for nursing-related students consists of 30 hours lectures and 4 hours training seminars. The lectures cover several aspects that are what is radiation, the physical and biological interaction of radiation with matters, the health effects to humans, risk-based approach and radiological protection. In the training seminars, students learn dose quantity and natural radiation by conducting some measurements of scattered radiation from a mobile X-ray equipment and natural radiation including radon. The key points of radiological education are to understand quantitative concepts such as doses and risk. In particular, risk and benefit are essential to understand how high health effects are from diagnostic radiation and why it must be protected. It should be stressed that risk and benefit are a common way of thinking. To improve biased understanding of radiation and radioactivity that students have before education, the training seminars conducted through measuring natural radiation around human life may be effective. The difficulties we face with are not only to widely cover physical entity of radiation, molecular-cellular level of human biology and epidemiology, but also to touch social issues related with health effects of radiation. The characteristics of radiation education require collaboration and coordination among those who are engaged in education. It is expected that the Japan Radiation Research Society can play a central role as a coordinator.
