Patient safety in external beam radiotherapy, results of the ACCIRAD project: Recommendations for radiotherapy institutions and national authorities on assessing risks and analysing adverse error-events and near misses

Abstract

The ACCIRAD project, commissioned by the European Commission (EC) to develop guidelines for risk analysis of accidental and unintended exposures in external beam radiotherapy (EBRT), was completed in the year 2014. In 2015, the "General guidelines on risk management in external beam radiotherapy" were published as EC report Radiation Protection (RP)-181. The present document is the third and final report of the findings from the ACCIRAD project. The main aim of this paper is to describe the key features of the risk management process and to provide general guidelines for radiotherapy departments and national authorities on risk assessment and analysis of adverse error-events and near misses. The recommendations provided here and in EC report RP-181 are aimed at promoting the harmonisation of risk management systems across Europe, improving patient safety, and enabling more reliable inter-country comparisons.

Keywords: ACCIRAD; Adverse error-event; Events reporting; Near miss; Quality assurance; Risk management.