[Quality & Safety in radiotherapy: advocacy for a professional strategy]

In medicine, as in oncological radiotherapy, as elsewhere, the precept of quality has no meaning if it is not defined. In France as everywhere radiotherapy has its forces and its weaknesses. As in every country, its future seems assured by its character cost effective as by its capacity to make progress in the triple point of view of its equipment, its professions and its organization. However, the French radiotherapy is in crisis. The professionals saw clearly. For more than 10 years they had recalled the medical authorities to their responsibilities concerning the demographic trends for the radiotherapists and the physicists, the renovation of the equipment, the modernization of the organizations, the promotion of the evaluation of procedures and outcomes and the development of a greater fairness in the financings. But the delay taken, the setting under pressure of the professionals by the State, its services, its agencies and the media following the recent accidents cause numerous perverse effects and worried the staff. The accident of Epinal was the starting fact of an effort of professionalisation of the risk management, but also of a disturbed period favourable with a certain confusion of minds, discouragement and protective behaviors. The risks felt by the professionals then seem especially to come from the authorities and the media. It appears that the topic of quality is at the center of all these speeches. Under this vocable, it is in fact the respect of the procedures related to the requirement of security which is privileged by the State and its representatives. The apparent security seems to override the real quality of the practices. Thus, time came for a clarification of the quality and security concepts, of organizations which contribute to it and for the development of a clear strategy bringing together the interprofessionnal actors. In this context, the implication of the College and especially of the Société française de radiothérapie oncologique is a requirement.