Abstract
A close partnership between the Canadian Partnership for Quality Radiotherapy (CPQR) and the Canadian Organization of Medical Physicist's (COMP) Quality Assurance and Radiation Safety Advisory Committee (QARSAC) has resulted in the development of a suite of Technical Quality Control (TQC) guidelines for radiation treatment equipment; they outline specific performance objectives and criteria that equipment should meet in order to assure an acceptable level of radiation treatment quality. The adopted framework for the development and maintenance of the TQCs ensures the guidelines incorporate input from the medical physics community during development, measures the workload required to perform the QC tests outlined in each TQC, and remain relevant (i.e., “living documents”) through subsequent planned reviews and updates. The framework includes consolidation of existing guidelines and/or literature by expert reviewers, structured stages of public review, external field‐testing, and ratification by COMP. This TQC development framework is a cross‐country initiative that allows for rapid development of robust, community‐driven living guideline documents that are owned by the community and reviewed to keep relevant in a rapidly evolving technical environment. Community engagement and uptake survey data shows 70% of Canadian centers are part of this process and that the data in the guideline documents reflect, and are influencing, the way Canadian radiation treatment centers run their technical quality control programs. For a medium‐sized center comprising six linear accelerators and a comprehensive brachytherapy program, we evaluate the physics workload to 1.5 full‐time equivalent physicists per year to complete all QC tests listed in this suite.PACS number(s): 87.55.Qr, 87.56.Fc, 87.56.‐v
Highlights
Radiation treatment is indicated for approximately 52% of all incident cases of cancer at some point during the management of the disease.[1]
In an effort to drive this quality improvement agenda at the national level, the Canadian Partnership for Quality Radiotherapy (CPQR) was formed as an alliance of the three key national professional organizations involved in radiation treatment in Canada: the Canadian Association of Radiation Oncology (CARO), the Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists (COMP), and the Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists (CAMRT)
The first nine documents took an average of 18 months to complete Phases 1 and 2; at that point they were posted as reference to the community on http://www.cpqr.ca/programs/technical-qualitycontrol/
Summary
Radiation treatment is indicated for approximately 52% of all incident cases of cancer at some point during the management of the disease.[1] A challenge that is general to all radiation treatment centers is the delivery of safe, state-of-the-art treatment to all patients in a fiscallyconstrained and regulatory-rich environment where commercial platforms evolve at a rapid pace. This context includes an interdisciplinary team of radiation oncologists, medical physicists, medical radiation therapists, and other professions who recognize that treatment is a complicated process that involves multiple handovers and input from all disciplines. CPQR does this through the development of consensus-based guidelines and quality indicators for radiation treatment program development and evaluation, and through partnership on initiatives aimed at driving compliance with such indicators, such as the partnership with Accreditation Canada on the integration of a radiation treatment module into its standards accreditation process. The Quality Assurance Guidelines for Canadian Radiation Treatment Programs[2] establishes a benchmark for achievement in the areas of programmatic quality and safety and details key quality indicators essential to programmatic assessment
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