[Development of an educational program starting from a process approach in a department of radiotherapy]

In order to be able to implement technological evolution and organizational changes on a regular and continuous manner, the radiotherapy department initiated in 2007 a comprehensive policy of operational risk management and overall quality program. The leadership in the department is convinced that the management of professional skills is mandatory to implement rapidly new treatment techniques while simultaneously assuring a high level of quality for patient care. The "process approach" is based on a comprehensive description of all the processes building up the organization in order to check how every single process contributes to patient satisfaction. This kind of approach allows an enhanced visibility on the functioning of the department, a better control on the inter-individual relations, both between different professional groups among caregivers and between those latter and the patients. This approach yields a view on the gain obtained with each single process and leads to identification of failures in safety barriers. The process approach identifies the required professional skills in order to guarantee a high quality of care. This has resulted in the development of a training program tailored to the needs of a radiotherapy department. This training program has recently been submitted and validated by the university authorities and is nowadays registered as a certificate at the university of Liège.