Abstract ID: 17215 Title: Quality Management Systems in Radiotherapy: Making Treatments
Safer
Though all medical physicists appreciate the need for safe high-quality radiation treatments,
most have no formal training in quality management or error proofing. This educational course
will explore two quality improvement tools that are considered standard in other industries:
incident learning and prospective hazard analysis. The focus will be on practical methods that
can be employed across a variety of clinics. With slight variations, these same tools can also be
applied to the diagnostic setting. In other areas of medicine the systematic use of such tools has
brought about measureable improvements in patient safety and treatment quality, and it is
expected that radiation oncology can benefit in a similar fashion. The learning objectives of this
educational SAMS course are: understand the benefit of incident learning and the pitfalls
associated with it, understand the principles of how to construct an effective incident reporting
system, understand the tools available for prospective hazard analysis and how to streamline
their use.