TU‐C‐350‐01: Review of Task Group Reports for Their Impacts On Clinical Practice

Abstract

This review task was initiated under the direction of the Clinical Practice Committee of the Professional Council of the AAPM. Some of the Task Group (TG) reports published by the AAPM present a wide range of comprehensive performance tests or QA processes for a particular radiological modality or procedure. Limited by available resources and given the range of clinical uses, full‐time clinical physicists of many medium and small centers often find it difficult to determine the minimum subset of a complete TG report to follow to ensure consistent high quality of patient care and procedure maintenance. Furthermore, state regulators have, in some instances, unfortunately adopted entire sections of TG reports as regulatory requirements despite the clarification in all TG reports that such use would be inappropriate. Therefore, Minimum Practice Recommendations (MPR) should be established and be charged by the new Practice Guideline Subcommittee. The MPRs are intended to provide the AAPM members with a set of requirements for a basic standard of medical physics practice that AAPM would consider necessary in all sizes of clinical practice sites. These MPRs are not designed to replace extensive clinical practice guidelines, TG reports or review articles, but rather to describe minimum common standards. The establishment of MPRs is an important expression of AAPM's mission to disseminate knowledge, in order to maintain a high common standard in medical physics practice. The Subcommittee is charged with reviewing TG reports prior to publication, and determining which reports would benefit from an accompanying Implementation Guideline.Educational Objectives:1. Understand the benefits of reviewing TG reports by the Professional Council.2. Understand the concept of Minimum Practice Recommendation (MPR).3. Understand the guidelines and issues related to the establishment of MPR.