13 May 2024
The BIR has endorsed new guidance, published by UKHSA, which aims to provide a voluntary learning system to support services reviewing their own practice when using radiation (ionising and non-ionising) to inform clinical care. It will also provide a framework that can be used to share data and learning nationally. The value of incident and near miss reporting and the associated learning is well appreciated in the UK radiotherapy community. However, to date there is no national reporting and learning system specifically intended to analyse and learn from clinical imaging, MRI or nuclear medicine incidents in the UK, until now. Peter Hiles (past Chair of the Radiation Safety Special Interest Group) and Helen Hughes (BIR Vice President External Affairs) represented BIR as one of the supporting societies, and the guidance was also endorsed by the BIR, BNMS, IPEM, SCoR and RCR.
Helen Hughes said, "The BIR are happy to have been involved in the development of this new National taxonomy and are excited to see the implementation across the UK to help promote learning from incidents in clinical imaging, MRI and nuclear medicine. This is a real opportunity for the diagnostic Imaging community to work together sharing learning to help reduce harm to our patients by improving radiation and MRI safety. As one of the aims of the BIR is to promote safety we are supporting the call for clinical departments to engage in the National taxonomy for incident learning system."
Read the full report here.
