The National System of Incident Reporting – Radiation Treatment (NSIR-RT) is a tool developed by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and the Canadian Partnership for Quality Radiotherapy (CPQR), now a standing committee of CAPCA, that allows participating radiotherapy treatment centres to report, track and analyze incidents from their local program, and anonymously from other Canadian centres.
NSIR-RT Bulletins
Since the inception of NSIR-RT, CPQR has published regular NSIR-RT Bulletins.
- Fall 2022: A patient partner’s perspective on safety in the radiation oncology department
- Summer 2022: Inaugural NSIR-RT Annual Report
- Spring 2022: Radiation treatment for patients with implanted medical devices
- Winter 2022: Update of pre-treatment quality control procedure
- Fall 2021: Using an audit and feedback system to improve the accuracy of events entered into the NSIR-RT
- Summer 2021: Working towards improved quality and safety in radiotherapy treatment planning processes
- Spring 2021: The importance of equipment integrity used in brachytherapy treatments
- Winter 2021: The importance of confirming patient identification during procedural changes (COVID-19-focused Bulletin)
- Fall 2020: The “impact” of dosimetric impact
- Summer 2020: Error reporting in a time of pandemic
- Spring 2020: Using volume trend analysis to reduce incident propagation
- Winter 2020: Second Victim: Supporting staff involved in radiation treatment incidents
- Fall 2019: Learning from incidents in the use of MRI in the RT environment
- Spring 2019: Appropriate policies and procedures can help mitigate incident occurrence
- Winter 2019: Commissioning and configuring checks of software systems by a second medical physicist
- Fall 2018: The potential impact of scheduling delays in the delivery of concurrent chemoradiotherapy
- Summer 2018: Automation bias in radiation treatment
- Summer 2017: NSIR-RT pilot evaluation report
- Spring 2017: NSIR-RT pilot: Using data to inform system improvement
- Summer 2016: How to classify a delay
- Fall 2016: Beyond BETA testing
NSIR-RT Safety Advisories
Although CPQR reviews incident submissions to inform the radiation treatment community on important patterns and trends, and make recommendations to minimize or mitigate risk, incident submissions are not monitored for the purpose of identifying specific incidents warranting dissemination.
CPQR may respond to requests to disseminate safety advisories from provincial cancer agency leadership, where there may be action required by radiation treatment programs or the broader cancer community.
CPQR has made these safety advisories available online to encourage a culture of continuous quality improvement.
