Staffing in Radiotherapy: An Activity Based Approach

Radiotherapy requires competent professional staff to ensure safe and effective patient treatment and management. There is a need to provide guidelines that recommend appropriate staffing levels to support the initiation of new services as well as the expansion or upgrade of existing services. Even simple upgrades, or replacement of existing equipment, may have a significant impact on staffing needs. Similarly, the introduction of education and training programmes will require staffing adjustments. A calculation algorithm has been developed to predict staffing levels based on the inputs that are known or can be easily estimated. This publication complements other IAEA publications used to support the initiation of basic radiation medicine services including Setting up a Radiotherapy Programme:: Clinical, Medical Physics, Radiation Protection and Safety Aspects , published in 2008.