Improving Quality of Radiotherapy Care Across Ontario Using a Community of Practice Approach

Background: Communities of Practice (CoPs) are defined as “a group of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis”. This concept was developed by Wegner and Lave in 1991, based on the theory that learning is more than just acquiring knowledge, but rather involves being socialized into a practice and developing an identity within a community. Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) is the provincial governments advisor on the cancer system and this work documents CCO's use of CoPs to help advance the quality of care in radiotherapy in Ontario, Canada. Aim: After the divestment of radiotherapy care from a centralised structure into individual hospitals in 2003/2004, there was a marked decrease in communication between the 14 Regional Cancer Centres (RCCs) in Ontario. As a means to rebuild the sense of community among radiation medicine programs (encompassing oncologists, physicists and radiation therapists), and to facilitate communication between the RCCs, the Radiation Treatment Program (RTP) at CCO developed and organized a CoP program. The three aims were knowledge creation, knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE), and community building. The ultimate goal was to improve the safety and quality of radiotherapy by reducing variation in practice between centers. Methods: Seven CoPs have been established since 2010; 3 are disease specific (head and neck, gynecologic and lung cancers) with multidisciplinary representation from oncologists, physicists, and radiation therapists. The other 4 CoPs are single-discipline (radiation therapy, physics, radiation safety officers, clinical specialist radiation therapists) to allow for practice specific knowledge-sharing and innovation. All CoPs are led and driven by volunteer members who identify and prioritize key quality issues and select corresponding projects to pursue. Results: CCO's CoPs have produced several knowledge products, including endorsed clinical guidance documents (5), and practical implementation tools (5), with over 20 additional products currently in development. Members have delivered numerous international and national KTE presentations and hosted 51 workshops. CoP guidance documents have 1: Improved safety ( “Implementation Strategy for Radiation Safety Straps” with 100% implementation across RCCs) 2: Standardized care ( “Contouring Nomenclature - Head and Neck Cancer”) with adoption of recommendations province-wide 3: Supported infrastructure improvements (“ MRI Simulation guideline document”). Conclusion: Overall, the RTP's CoP program has been effective in achieving its main three aims: knowledge creation, KTE, and community building. This approach of a member-driven voluntary CoP should be explored and modeled in other healthcare settings as a means to develop and share knowledge, reduce variation in care, standardize practice and improve patient care.