Quality and Safety

RO-ILS: Radiation Oncology Incident Learning System

is a free program that allows practices across the country to contribute patient safety data to a national database via an online portal. The program is tied to a patient safety organization which provides accompanying confidentiality and privilege protections outlined in the federal Patient Safety Act. The mission of RO-ILS is to facilitate safer and higher quality care in radiation oncology by providing a mechanism for shared learning in a secure and non-punitive environment. There is no cost to enroll or participate in RO-ILS thanks to the generous financial contributions of sponsors ASTRO and AAPM and supporters including AAMD.

Safety experts mine the national database and develop education for the radiation oncology community. includes safety notices, case studies, themed reports, and aggregate data reports.

Recent RO-ILS education of particular interest to dosimetrists includes:

New on wrong vertebral body alignment using auto-registration for SBRT.
New RO-ILS Releases New Themed Report on Rushing: The new contains aggregate analysis comparing rushing and non-rushing cohorts in the database, four case examples, and mitigation strategies. The findings related to problem type, treatment techniques, contributing factors, and more can inform areas requiring additional focus and improvement activities so don’t miss reading this report!
discusses the contributing factors that resulted in a discrepancy between patient set up during simulation and treatment.
on prescription transition error and incorrect MUs
describes brachytherapy applicator digitalization.
describes the limitations of a plan sum and offers 8 mitigation strategies.
: Handouts from the 娇色导航2021 Annual Meeting presentation.
: A dosimetrist-to-dosimetrist peer review helped identify an incompletely contoured target (Case 5).
: Multiple staff members missed a patient’s prior spinal radiation and therefore it was not taken into consideration for composite planning.
: While attempting to treat the first fraction of a high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy case, a staff member could not upload the treatment file to the treatment delivery computer.
: A systematic error related to SRS heterogeneity corrections affected multiple patients and was difficult to detect.

Safety is No Accident

is a comprehensive reference guide describing the radiation oncology process of care,
the clinical team, safety initiatives and tools and quality management. The document was updated in 2019 and is endorsed by AAMD.

Consensus Publications

娇色导航endorsed or reviewed the following safety-focused documents:

Editorial: – 2023 Update (ASTRO)
– 2023 Update (ASTRO)
– 2022 Update (ASTRO)
– 2022 Update (ASTRO)
– 2018 (AAPM)
– 2016 (ASTRO)
– 2014 (ASTRO)
– 2013 (ASTRO)

Resource Database

For 娇色导航documents and presentations, select the “Safety” topic in the .