A Critical Investigation of Structural Determinants of Patient Radiation Safety in Nigerian Public Radiology Departments: A Bourdieusian Analysis

Patient radiation safety in Nigerian public radiology departments is structured not only by individual practitioner knowledge and behaviour but by structural determinants, including economic capital deficits, cultural capital hierarchies between professions, and social capital networks that determine how radiation safety practices are enacted, contested, and reproduced in institutional settings. A Bourdieusian analysis of these structural determinants offers a theoretically distinctive original contribution to the radiation safety sociology literature. This study conducts a critical investigation of the structural determinants of patient radiation safety in Nigerian public radiology departments using Bourdieu's concepts of capital, field, and habitus as the analytical framework. A critical ethnographic methodology is applied over eighteen months of participant observation across six public radiology departments in North Central and North East Nigeria, supplemented by fifty depth interviews with radiographers, radiologists, administrators, and patients, and document analysis of institutional safety records and policy texts. The ethnographic data are subjected to Bourdieusian field analysis, mapping the capital configurations that determine safety practice quality at each site. The original theoretical contribution is a Bourdieusian Structural Radiation Safety Analysis identifying the three structuring mechanisms of Nigerian public radiology safety: the economic capital deficit cycle that prevents equipment maintenance investment, the professional capital asymmetry between radiography and radiology that limits safety accountability, and the institutional habitus of deference that suppresses safety challenge behaviours. Available radiation safety research from Nigeria has not previously applied structural sociological theory to explain safety practice variation. Keywords: radiation safety, Bourdieu, structural determinants, Nigerian radiology, critical ethnography.