Quality assurance in radiotherapy on a national level; experience from Norway: the KVIST initiative.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: In radiotherapy (RT), there are high requirements for quality assurance (QA) in all the steps of the process. Development of QA systems are demanding in terms of financial and human resources. A national QA programme (KVIST) has been established in Norway to facilitate implementation of QA activity on hospital level. METHOD: The KVIST organisation comprises the KVIST team, the reference group (RG) and the working groups (WGs). The KVIST team is multidisciplinary and are employed in permanent positions. The RG acts as an advisory body for the KVIST team in defining and ranking the priority of projects. Relevant national QA projects are identified in collaboration with the RG, and WGs are established to carry out the various projects. RESULT: Several national consensus documents have been prepared by the various WGs. Systems for incident handling and activity reporting have been established and clinical audits have been implemented in Norwegian RT. Guidelines for RT of various diagnoses have also been prepared in collaboration with National Cancer groups. CONCLUSION: The KVIST programme has been very well acknowledged in the Norwegian RT community. It has succeeded in creating a positive attitude towards QA and improved the communication between centres and the various professions.