Taxonometric applications in radiotherapy incident analysis

Area of Science:

• Healthcare systems analysis
• Patient safety research
• Risk management in medicine

Background:

• Growing awareness of patient safety risks within healthcare systems.
• Necessity for systematic methods to assess and manage patient safety incidents.
• Current limitations in quantifying the severity of patient harm.

Purpose of the Study:

• To discuss classification schemes for risk assessment and management in healthcare.
• To introduce a novel approach for quantifying patient incident severity.
• To explore the utility of a basic-causes table for resource allocation.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing classification schemes for patient safety risk assessment.
• Development of a new approach based on patient activity domains.
• Application of the equivalent uniform dose concept for severity estimation.

Main Results:

• A structured approach to failure mode description enhances communication and decision-making.
• A new method quantifies incident severity based on patient journey and equivalent uniform dose.
• A basic-causes table can improve resource allocation for incident prevention.

Conclusions:

• Effective patient safety management necessitates understanding incident probability, consequences, and causes.
• The proposed method offers a basis for quantifying incident severity, aiding risk assessment.
• Utilizing structured reporting with basic causes facilitates targeted resource allocation for enhanced patient safety.