Safety culture to improve accidental event reporting in radiotherapy

Background and purpose. The potential for unintended and adverse radiation exposure in radiotherapy
(RT) is real and should be studied because RT is a highly complex, multistep process, which requires
input from numerous individuals from different areas and steps of the RT workflow. The ‘Incident’
(I) is an event the consequence of which is not negligible from the point of view of protection or
safety. A ‘near miss’ (NM) is defined as an event that is highly likely to happen but did not occur.
The purpose of this work is to show that through systematic reporting and analysis of these adverse
events, their occurrence can be reduced. Materials and methods. Staff were trained to report every
type of unintended and adverse radiation exposure and to provide a full description of it. Results.
By 2018, 110 worksheets had been collected, with an average of 6.1 adverse events per year (with 780
patients treated per year, meaning an average incident rate of 0.78%). In 2001 –2009, 37 events...

Source: Journal of Radiological Protection - December 6, 2021 Category: Physics Authors: Francesco Tramacere, Angela Sardaro, Stefano Arcangeli, Nicola Maggialetti, Corinna Altini, Dino Rubini, Giuseppe Rubini, Maurizio Portaluri and Artor Niccoli Asabella Source Type: research