Guest Editorial: Patient safety and errors in the application of medical radiation: our responsibility

I appreciate the opportunity to share with the JACMP readership some information gained from recent experiences and activities related to safety in the delivery of medical radiation. Medical Physics is the discipline of physics that brings the application of scientific methods to bear in medicine and biology. Medical physicists provide services that impact the quality and safety of patient care through direct clinical work, research and development and through education. We have each embarked on this career as a medical physicist, because we felt that our skills and knowledge could be used in a productive manner to benefit people in need of medical care. That care many times utilizes the complex technology we develop and bring to the clinic. We are directly responsible for the identification and implementation of improvements in patient safety for the medical use of radiation in imaging and radiation therapy. Patients receive diagnostic and therapeutic radiation with the full intent and belief that they are receiving safe and effective care by a medical team to whom they entrust their lives. Recent articles in The New York Times as well as FDA initiatives and Congressional hearings have brought national attention to errors in the medical use of radiation, ranging from significantly increased doses received by patients having CT scans to patients receiving lethal excess doses of radiation during radiation therapy. Any error is one too many; we must pay attention to any event that causes harm to a patient. The resulting national attention has allowed the associations that represent the medical team members, manufacturers, government agencies and others to express thoughts and experiences about the problems and solutions in the use of medical radiation. Even though the use of medical radiation impacts fewer patients than other areas of medicine, we are in the spotlight and have an opportunity to make landmark improvements in our domain of practice which could, in turn, be seen by the larger medical community as an example of better medicine. To this end, the community representing the members of the medical team in radiation medicine have joined together to identify and address the common critical issues whose resolution could substantially improve safety and quality in the medical use of radiation. The following issues were defined, in part, by the congressional testimony of almost every medical association at the hearing on medical radiation on Feb 26, 2010: