Program Information
A Survey of Radiation Oncology Residents' Training and Preparedness to Lead Patient Safety Programs in Clinics
M Spraker*, M Nyflot , E Ford , G Kane , J Zeng , K Hendrickson , University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Presentations
SU-D-201-7 (Sunday, July 31, 2016) 2:05 PM - 3:00 PM Room: 201
Purpose:
Safety and quality has garnered increased attention in radiation oncology, and physicians and physicists are ideal leaders of clinical patient safety programs. However, it is not clear whether residency programs incorporate formal patient safety training and adequately equip residents to assume this leadership role. A national survey was conducted to evaluate medical and physics residents’ exposure to safety topics and their confidence with the skills required to lead clinical safety programs.
Methods:
Radiation oncology residents were identified in collaboration with ARRO and AAPM. The survey was released in February 2016 via email using REDCap. This included questions about exposure to safety topics, confidence leading safety programs, and interest in training opportunities (i.e. workshops). Residents rated their exposure, skills, and confidence on 4 or 5-point scales. Medical and physics residents responses were compared using chi-square tests.
Results:
Responses were collected from 56 of 248 (22%) physics and 139 of 690 (20%) medical residents. More than two thirds of all residents had no or only informal exposure to incident learning systems (ILS), root cause analysis (RCA), failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), and the concept of human factors engineering (HFE). Likewise, 63% of residents had not heard of RO-ILS. Response distributions were similar, however more physics residents had formal exposure to FMEA (p<0.0001) and felt they were adequately trained to lead FMEAs in clinic (p<0.001) than medical residents. Only 36% of residents felt their patient safety training was adequate, and 58% felt more training would benefit their education.
Conclusion:
These results demonstrate that, despite increasing desire for patient safety training, medical and physics residents’ exposure to relevant concepts is low. Physics residents had more exposure to FMEA than medical residents, and were more confident in leading FMEA. This suggests that increasing resident exposure to specific topics may increase their confidence.
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