The willingness of hospital-wide staff to respond to a RDD has not yet been assessed. One framework that has proved applicable in assessing root causes of willingness to respond to duty during emergencies has been Witte’s Extended Parallel Process Model. This framework allows for examining the interplay and influence of perceptions of “threat” and “efficacy” on adaptive or maladaptive behavior of healthcare workers in AZ 960 905586-69-8 deciding whether to report to duty in the face of risk. We have set out to assess the willingness of employees at a large, urban, tertiary-care medical center to respond during a RDD event. Accordingly, we aim to gauge whether a clinically significant proportion of the workforce may be unwilling to respond to duty during an RDD event, and whether specific personal characteristics and beliefs are independently associated with willingness to respond in this event. We further analyze the influences of perceived threat and perceived efficacy among hospital employees utilizing Witte’s EPPM and attempt to identify factors potentially influencing willingness and ability to respond. The use of a RDD or “dirty bomb” as a terrorist weapon is a concern, as reflected by its inclusion among the U.S. National Planning Scenarios. Psychological models suggest that risk perception is an interplay between affective and analytic processes. According to these models, peripheral factors independent of the actual risk have a major effect on the perceived dread of an event. Factors that render a perceived risk as more dreadful include events that are involuntary, manmade, exotic, catastrophic, and with potential to affect the next generation with little or no individual control. Virtually each and every one of these risk perception modifiers is present in a RDD scenario, rendering this event to be highly dreadful to some, well beyond the actual risks it bears. During critical events, healthcare workers are expected to work additional hours under significant stress, potentially at risk of personal safety. When faced with the need to respond to duty during a terrorist event, health professionals are subject to the psychological impact of dread and outrage, caused by the perception-modifying characteristics of a RDD event. This may explain, at least in part, why such a large proportion of hospital workers, almost 39%, report they would not be willing to report to duty if asked during a RDD event. When further probed if they would respond to a RDD event “regardless of severity”, almost half of surveyed staff indicated they are unlikely to do so. These outcomes are in accordance with the limited but expanding evidence-based literature on the perceptions of the hospital-based workforce toward their emergency response duties in a post-9/11 world. In two surveys performed in 2005 of NYC healthcare workers, and hospital employees in 5 states, workers were far more willing to respond to natural disasters than to a radiological event or an infectious disease outbreak.