COMP report: CPQR technical quality control guidelines for radiation treatment centers.

The Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists (COMP), in close partnership with the Canadian Partnership for Quality Radiotherapy (CPQR) has developed a series of Technical Quality Control (TQC) guidelines for radiation treatment equipment. These guidelines outline the performance objectives that equipment should meet in order to ensure an acceptable level of radiation treatment quality. The TQC guidelines have been rigorously reviewed and field tested in a variety of Canadian radiation treatment facilities. The development process enables rapid review and update to keep the guidelines current with changes in technology. This announcement provides an introduction to the guidelines, describing their scope and how they should be interpreted. Details of recommended tests can be found in separate, equipment specific TQC guidelines published in the JACMP (COMP Reports), or the website of the Canadian Partnership for Quality Radiotherapy (www.cpqr.ca).

COMP report: CPQR technical quality control guidelines for brachytherapy remote afterloaders.

The Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists (COMP), in close partnership with the Canadian Partnership for Quality Radiotherapy (CPQR) has developed a series of Technical Quality Control (TQC) guidelines for radiation treatment equipment. These guidelines outline the performance objectives that equipment should meet in order to ensure an acceptable level of radiation treatment quality. The TQC guidelines have been rigorously reviewed and field tested in a variety of Canadian radiation treatment facilities. The development process enables rapid review and update to keep the guidelines current with changes in technology (the most updated version of this guideline can be found on the CPQR website). This particular TQC details recommended quality control testing of brachytherapy remote afterloaders.

Production, review, and impact of technical quality control guidelines in a national context.

A close partnership between the Canadian Partnership for Quality Radiotherapy (CPQR) and the Canadian Organization of Medical Physicist's (COMP) Quality Assurance and Radiation Safety Advisory Committee (QARSAC) has resulted in the development of a suite of Technical Quality Control (TQC) guidelines for radiation treatment equipment; they outline specific performance objectives and criteria that equipment should meet in order to assure an acceptable level of radiation treatment quality. The adopted framework for the development and maintenance of the TQCs ensures the guidelines incorporate input from the medical physics com-munity during development, measures the workload required to perform the QC tests outlined in each TQC, and remain relevant (i.e., "living documents") through subsequent planned reviews and updates. The framework includes consolidation of existing guidelines and/or literature by expert reviewers, structured stages of public review, external field-testing, and ratification by COMP. This TQC develop-ment framework is a cross-country initiative that allows for rapid development of robust, community-driven living guideline documents that are owned by the com-munity and reviewed to keep relevant in a rapidly evolving technical environment. Community engagement and uptake survey data shows 70% of Canadian centers are part of this process and that the data in the guideline documents reflect, and are influencing, the way Canadian radiation treatment centers run their technical quality control programs. For a medium-sized center comprising six linear accelerators and a comprehensive brachytherapy program, we evaluate the physics workload to 1.5 full-time equivalent physicists per year to complete all QC tests listed in this suite.