Importance Of Decision Making In Radiotherapy

Decision making is an essential skill necessary on a radiotherapy treatment unit to ensure timely, well-considered decisions, optimal care of all radiotherapy patients and to prevent adverse events/ incidents that could cause harm to either staff or patients. In order to achieve this utopia in radiotherapy, daily adaptation, continual development, knowledge of our patient populations, an understanding of clinical relevance, problem solving and critical thinking are essential. From my experience, critical thinking and daily adaptation is fundamental on the treatment unit. As a student I used several adjectives when writing my learning objectives as I believe these are the core skills necessary in decision making and delivery of optimal care on the treatment unit For example, to question, analyse, synthesise, interpret, infer, induce/deduce, develop, participate and problem solve.

From my experience, in order to provide safe, high standard of care we must use our ability to reason, think, and judge and this is complemented by a mixed experience level of staff on the unit. For this reason continual professional development (CPD) and evaluation of performance is essential in our profession. We must be aware of the risks in clinical practice during daily decision making and use clinical judgement in tandem with published guidelines/ protocols/ evidence based practice. From my clinical experience, working with awareness, effective communication (written, verbal, visual) with the multi-disciplinary team (MDT) and patients, reflection, evaluation and critical appraisal of our work is essential to achieve this for example, MDT meetings, having contact details for relevant personnel and documentation of situations and actions taken as the...

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...natomy?, human error?, correct plan?), image manipulation and processing and making clinical decisions using the verification local guidelines. Relevant experience and reflection on decision making (e.g. outline objectives to achieve the required level of competence, record of all clinical competencies and related reflections on practice) is essential regarding verification and imaging on the treatment unit.

In conclusion, in my opinion safe and optimal care regarding day-day decisions requires technical expertise, the ability to think critically, experience, and clinical judgment. The high-expectation of RTs is dependent on daily adaptation, CPD, prioritisation of workload, professional accountability, independent and interdependent decision-making, and creative problem-solving on the treatment unit as illustrated in the above examples from my clinical practice.