Emilie van Deventer
World Health Organization (WHO)

IOMP co-organized a webinar on “Engaging patients for medical radiation safety”

Since 2019, the World Patient Safety Day is celebrated annually on 17 September. This year’s World Patient Safety Day sought to highlight the critical importance of listening to patients, families and caregivers, learning from their experiences, and involving them in every aspect of care, to avoid harm, lower the risk of errors and reduce the impact of harm when it does occur. This requires a shift in paradigm, from care designed for patients to care designed with patients, their families and caregivers. This is especially relevant when it comes to radiation safety of medical exposures where an understanding of benefits and risks is an important aspect.

The World Health Organization (WHO) organized a webinar on 18 September 2023 together with six non-governmental organizations in official relations with WHO who are committed to empower their membership to strive for radiation safety of patients. Professor Damilakis represented IOMP and co-moderated one of the two panel discussions. The other NGOs were ICRP, ISR, ISRRT, RAD-AID and WFNMB. Each organization discussed their strategies for information provision to patients and how they can learn from the experience of patients and families exposed to unsafe care to improve understanding of the nature of harm and foster the development of more effective solutions. With the IT support of IOMP, over a thousand participants from over 100 countries joined the webinar whose recording is available at https://www.iomp.org/iomp-school-webinars-recordings/ .