• Radiation Oncologists, Medical Physicists, Dosimetrists, therapists, Nurses, Administrators, IT personnel

Prerequisites:  Professionals with backgrounds in the above-mentioned disciplines

Workshop Description:

Task Group 100 (TG-100) of the AAPM has developed a new quality management protocol, which recommends that institutions perform hazard analysis for radiotherapy procedures and develop quality management programs based on this analysis. Analysis of previous radiotherapy incidents shows that errors occur not only because of failures in equipment alone but also because of errors in clinical processes. A good quality management program should be designed such that one identifies prospectively what the various failure modes are and the risks associated with them. One should then place various controls to avoid or intercepts these errors before they propagate and cause harm to the patient. TG100 recommended the use of four industrial engineering tools for risk analysis, these are: Process mapping, failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) and fault tree analysis (FTA). These tools can be easily adapted to any practice because of their simplicity and effectiveness in providing efficient ways to enhance the safety and quality of treatment processes. This workshop gives an overview of these tools and a hands-on experience how these tools can be used to develop a risk-based quality management program.

Learning Objectives:

• To increase familiarity with the methodology and results of the TG 100 exercise.
• Learn how to design a process map for a radiotherapy process
• Learn how to perform a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) for a radiotherapy process
• Learn the use of Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)
• Learn how to design a quality-management program based upon the information obtained from process mapping, FMEA and FTA.