Quality and Safety in Radiotherapy

Todd Pawlicki and Arno J. Mundt work in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Diego.Peter Dunscombe works in the medical physics department at the Tom Baker Cancer Center. Pierre Scalliet works in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the St. Luc University Hospital.

• Introduction to Quality Assurance and Quality Management. Medical Quality Assurance in Radiotherapy. Quality of Systems and Processes in Radiotherapy. Patient-Specific Quality Assurance in Radiotherapy.

it goes well beyond [quality assurance tests] and tackles quality at the highest levels of management and strategy. Virtually every aspect of quality and safety in radiotherapy is dissected … it serves as an excellent starting point and contains many references for further reading. I can therefore see this book being an extremely useful first reference for any manager wishing to review their current quality management practices. It is up-to-date in terms of technology and the latest thinking on quality management programmes, and contains several practical case studies and worked examples. …perhaps it is time for all of us to re-think our quality programmes, and this book would certainly be a valuable starting point.—Keri Owen, Scope, December 2011The contents and layout are excellent.—Professor Eric E. Klein, Washington University School of Medicine…well written and easy to read. Because of its comprehensive nature, students as well as seasoned radiation therapy professionals will find this book useful. … No one book contains the range of topics covered in this book. There are books devoted to quality assurance of radiotherapy devices which go into much more detail on each device. There are books on quality management, human factors engineering, and error prevention which are not written in the context of radiotherapy. In this book, the authors provide a brief review of all these topics with enough detail to convey the salient points needed to understand the fundamentals. Each chapter includes a wealth of references which readers can use to supplement the material in this book. This is an important reference on critically important topics.—Arthur Olch, PhD, FAAPM, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Doody's Review Service, June 2011