Self-Reported COVID-19 Infections and Social Mixing Behavior at Oncology Meetings.

PURPOSE: The COVID-19 pandemic largely suspended in-person scientific meetings because of risk of disease spread. In the era of vaccination and social distancing practices, meetings have begun returning to in-person formats. We surveyed attendees and potential attendees of 2 oncology meetings in the United States to identify rates of mixing behavior and the subsequent rate of self-reported COVID-19 infection. METHODS AND MATERIALS: We collected via survey reported social mixing behavior and COVID-19 positivity (within 21 days of meeting conclusion) of actual and potential in-person attendees of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Quality Care Symposium held September 24 to 25, 2021, and the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting held October 24 to 27, 2021. Conference speakers and other participants were identified through publicly available meeting materials and targeted via e-mail when possible. Recruitment of additional attendees and potential attendees was also conducted through a sharable link promoted via oncology newsletters and social media. Descriptive statistics alone were performed owing to low COVID-19 event rates. RESULTS: Response rates from targeted conference participants with publicly available e-mails were 27.4% for the ASCO and 14.3% for the ASTRO meetings. The ASCO survey produced 94 responses (48 in-person attendees). The ASTRO survey produced 370 responses (267 in-person attendees). Across both meetings, 3 of 308 (1.0%) in-person attendees versus 2 of 141 (1.4%) nonattendees tested positive for COVID-19. Low COVID-19 positivity rates were reported among in-person attendees spending more (>20) versus fewer (≤20) hours attending live sessions (2.2% vs 0%) and among indoor social event participants versus nonparticipants (0.8% vs 1.9%). Attendees largely felt comfortable attending additional in-person meetings after experiencing ASCO (87.5%) or ASTRO (91.9%) and felt mask compliance was good or excellent at ASCO (100%) and ASTRO (94.6%) meetings. CONCLUSIONS: In-person meetings do not seem to be contributing to high rates of new COVID-19 infections in the setting of vaccine and social distancing mandates, supporting paths forward for at least partially in-person conferences as COVID-19 becomes endemic.

Human factor associations with safety events in radiation therapy.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Incident learning can reveal important opportunities for safety improvement, yet learning from error is challenged by a number of human factors. In this study, incident learning reports have been analyzed with the human factors analysis classification system (HFACS) to uncover predictive patterns of human contributing factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixteen hundred reports from the Safety in Radiation Oncology incident learning system were filtered for inclusion ultimately yielding 141 reports. A radiotherapy-specific error type was assigned to each event as were all reported human contributing factors. An analysis of associations between human contributing factors and error types was performed. RESULTS: Multiple associations between human factors were found. Relationships between leadership and risk were demonstrated with supervision failures. Skill-based errors (those done without much thought while performing familiar tasks) were found to pose a significant safety risk to the treatment planning process. Errors made during quality assurance (QA) activities were associated with decision-based errors which indicate lacking knowledge or skills. CONCLUSION: An application of the HFACS to incident learning reports revealed relationships between human contributing factors and radiotherapy errors. Safety improvement efforts should include supervisory influences as they affect risk and error. An association between skill-based and treatment planning errors showed a need for more mindfulness in this increasingly automated process. An association between decision and QA errors revealed a need for improved education in this area. These and other findings can be used to strategically advance safety.