RO-ILS: Radiation Oncology Incident Learning System: A report from the first year of experience.

Purpose: Incident learning is a critical tool to improve patient safety. The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 established essential legal protections to allow for the collection and analysis of medical incidents nationwide.

Methods And Materials: Working with a federally listed patient safety organization (PSO), the American Society for Radiation Oncology and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine established RO-ILS: Radiation Oncology Incident Learning System (RO-ILS).

American Society for Radiation Oncology's Performance Assessment for the Advancement of Radiation Oncology Treatment: A practical approach for informing practice improvement.

Purpose: Performance Assessment for the Advancement of Radiation Oncology Treatment (PAAROT) is a practice quality improvement program. This study seeks to determine baseline performance rates and practice variation from PAAROT data.

Methods And Materials: The cohort includes all physicians from academic, hospital, and free-standing settings who completed at least 10 consecutive self-audited medical records in the PAAROT program (version 2.

Racial differences in testing motivation and psychological distress following pretest education for BRCA1 gene testing.

Objectives: We conducted a randomized trial to investigate racial differences in response to two alternate pretest education strategies for BRCA1 genetic testing: a standard education model and an education plus counseling (E + C) model.

Materials And Methods: Two hundred twenty-eight Caucasian women and 70 African American women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer were contacted for a baseline telephone interview to assess sociodemographic characteristics, number of relatives affected with cancer, and race before pretest education. Outcome variables included changes from baseline to 1-month follow-up in cancer-related distress and genetic testing intentions, as well as provision of a blood sample after the education session.

Patients' attitudes about autonomy and confidentiality in genetic testing for breast-ovarian cancer susceptibility.

The identification of BRCA1 and BRCA2, two breast-ovarian cancer susceptibility genes, has brought many ethical and social issues to the forefront. This paper presents the results of a survey assessing the attitudes of 238 unaffected first-degree relatives of women with breast or ovarian cancer regarding the ethical issues of autonomy and confidentiality as they relate to BRCA1/2 testing. Baseline knowledge about BRCA1/2 and ethnic and psychosocial characteristics of our study population were examined to determine their association with women's attitudes.