title: Development of a brachytherapy audit checklist tool.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To develop a brachytherapy audit checklist that could be used to prepare for Nuclear Regulatory Commission or agreement state inspections, to aid in readiness for a practice accreditation visit, or to be used as an annual internal audit tool.
  
  
  METHODS
  Six board-certified medical physicists and one radiation oncologist conducted a thorough review of brachytherapy-related literature and practice guidelines published by professional organizations and federal regulations. The team members worked at two facilities that are part of a large, academic health care center. Checklist items were given a score based on their judged importance. Four clinical sites performed an audit of their program using the checklist. The sites were asked to score each item based on a defined severity scale for their noncompliance, and final audit scores were tallied by summing the products of importance score and severity score for each item.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The final audit checklist, which is available online, contains 83 items. The audit scores from the beta sites ranged from 17 to 71 (out of 690) and identified a total of 7-16 noncompliance items. The total time to conduct the audit ranged from 1.5 to 5 hours.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A comprehensive audit checklist was developed which can be implemented by any facility that wishes to perform a program audit in support of their own brachytherapy program. The checklist is designed to allow users to identify areas of noncompliance and to prioritize how these items are addressed to minimize deviations from nationally-recognized standards.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Electronic address: joannp@med.umich.edu.
authors.forename: Joann
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Prisciandaro
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hadley
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
authors.forename: Shruti
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jolly
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
authors.forename: Choonik
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Roberson
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
authors.forename: Donald
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Roberts
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; Department of Radiation Oncology, Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System, Ann Arbor, MI.
authors.forename: Timothy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ritter
mesh_terms: D000068:Accreditation; D001918:Brachytherapy / Q000592:standards*; D057189:Checklist; D054869:Clinical Audit; D006268:Health Facilities / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D008330:Management Audit / Q000379:methods*; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D018787:Radiation Oncology; D012449:Safety / Q000592:standards*
keywords: Audit; Brachytherapy; Checklist