A blinded, prospective study of error detection during physician chart rounds in radiation oncology.
Peer review of radiation oncology patient treatment plans can help prevent harm and reduce errors. In this prospective blinded study, researchers generated treatment plans with simulated errors and randomly inserted these treatment plans into weekly chart rounds to assess the effectiveness of peer review on error detection. Overall detection rate of clinically significant problematic plans was 55%. The authors suggest that error detection could be significantly improved by shortening chart rounds and routine insertion of problematic plans into rounds.