2023 RO-ILS Dosimetry Safety Stars
National Medical Dosimetrist Day is August 16, 2023. Last year, RO-ILS released a good catch event to highlight a case where an attentive dosimetrist stopped an error from reaching the patient. The 2023 great catch event shares an example of when a dosimetrist was the first person to identify prior radiation that ultimately averted a significant overdose risk.
New this year, RO-ILS wanted to also recognize specific medical dosimetrists for their contributions to patient safety. RO-ILS participants nominated their colleagues and provided rationale for why the nominee was deserving of national recognition for their efforts in patient safety.
Many fantastic dosimetrists were nominated, and all are worthy of acknowledgement in their own right. During the review, nominee and nominator information was blinded and focus was placed on how the nominees exemplified safety culture principles, invested in incident learning and led quality improvement initiatives. In alphabetical order, below are the three 2023 Dosimetry Safety Stars. Join us in congratulating these three well-deserving medical dosimetrists and take this opportunity to thank and celebrate your dosimetry colleagues!
 | Alyx Alfson, MS, CMD, RT(T) |
“Alyx participates in our QA Committee, offers remarkable quality improvement ideas, and advocates for high quality care and safety. She is an excellent teacher as well and provides ongoing education to her staff and other team members. She is a true leader of safe, efficient, coordinated care.”
- Stephanie Bailey, RTT, Radiation Therapist
“Alyx leads our department’s Treatment Planning Service Improvement Committee. This committee is extremely productive; in the past year they have addressed over 50 incident learning system reports with a wide variety in improvements. Recent work includes an overhaul of the electron radiotherapy planning procedure to improve cutout definition and fabrication, improved standardization of clinical goals for spine SBRT, and defining best practices for exporting alignment structures for IGRT.”
- Dustin Jacqmin, PhD, Medical Physicist and Assistant Professor
 | Scott Simmons, CMD, RT(R)(T) |
“Scott is a champion for patient safety in the way he supports his team. He started huddles to promote communication regarding treatment plans. When issues are identified, Scott encourages the team to submit to RO-ILS. When our company started using Monaco, Scott created Monaco Talks to help the team learn, troubleshoot and support each other as they learned to use this new tool. It was a forum to share cases, and tips and tricks to help everyone feel comfortable using the tool and allow a safe space to ask questions.”
- Alida Wagner, MSN, RN, CPHQ; Quality and Safety Manager
 | Patricia Sponseller, MS, CMD, RTT (R)(T) |
“Patty is a certified medical dosimetrist with a long career with a consistent dedication to education, safety and quality. She has been a key participant in our practice's incident learning system (which includes RO-ILS), responsible for numerous QI initiatives, and has educated a generation of people on quality and safety. She has also held lead roles in AAMD where she has promoted quality and safety awareness.”
- Eric Ford, PhD, DABR, FAAPM, and FASTRO;
Medical Physicist, Professor, Director, and Vice-Chair
