ESTRO 2021 Abstract Book

S223

ESTRO 2021

Health and Human Sciences, , Plymouth, United Kingdom; 4 Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and Institute of Cancer Research, Radiotherapy, Sutton, United Kingdom

Purpose or Objective Patients undergoing radiotherapy are positioned to restrict motion, ensuring treatment accuracy. Immobilisation can be uncomfortable which may impact treatment accuracy. Radiation Therapists (RTT) are responsible for managing patient comfort, yet there is little evidence to guide practice. The objective was to explore patient and RTT experiences of comfort during radiotherapy and identify methods for how comfort may be managed. Materials and Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain insight into optimal solutions for managing comfort from both patients and RTTs. Adult patients were purposefully recruited from Somerset NHS FT (SFT NHS) from those referred for, receiving or had received radiotherapy within 3 months and treatment delivery time on the couch exceeded 10 minutes (the time the patient was immobilised on the radiotherapy couch). Practicing RTTs were recruited nationally across the United Kingdom (UK) with experience of treatment delivery times exceeding 10 minutes. Patients were interviewed at SFT NHS or in their homes, and RTTs were interviewed via telephone. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, thematically analysed and triangulated using the convergence coding matrix to explore the convergence, silence and dissonance between patient and RTT findings. NHS Research Ethics Committee approved the study, and the study was registered [NCT03984435]. Results 25 patients and 25 RTTs gave informed consent and were interviewed between February and July 2019. For patients, four main themes emerged: acceptance and coping, positioning and immobilisation, information and communication, and the environment. For RTTs, three main themes emerged: perceptions of acceptance and coping, positioning and immobilisation, and information and communication. During triangulation, complimentary themes were found between patients and RTTs for the acceptance and coping themes which reflected how patients deal with discomfort and transcend to accept the discomfort; for the positioning and immobilisation themes, which focused on accuracy and importance of rigid immobilisation; and the information and communication themes where patient education and coaching were viewed as important. RTTs were silent about the environment theme present in patient findings; welcoming reception area and aesthetics were considered important by patients. Themes were grounded in potential solutions to improve comfort such as audio-visual distraction (music, nature sound, lighting), empathetic methods (hand holding/tactile string) and accommodating co-morbidities (position change/soft pad). Conclusion This qualitative study has provided the voice of patients and RTTs and their experiences of comfort during radiotherapy. It has highlighted some of the negative experiences and methods to improve patient comfort based on current UK practice. This information will be used to inform the development of radiotherapy comfort invention(s). OC-0314 Panoptes - a novel tool for teaching organ at risk delineation to radiotherapy technologists J. Scheurleer 1 , E.M. Vasquez Osorio 2 , E. Assendelft 3 , A. Bel 4 , I. van Dijk 4 , H. Bijwaard 1 , M. van Herk 5 1 Inholland University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Health, Sports and Social Work, Medical Technology Research Group, Haarlem, The Netherlands; 2 University of Manchester, Division of Cancer Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health , Manchester, United Kingdom; 3 Inholland University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Health, Sports and Social Work, Haarlem, The Netherlands; 4 Amsterdam University Medical Centres, location AMC, Department of Radiation Oncology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 5 University of Manchester, Division of Cancer Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, Manchester, United Kingdom Purpose or Objective Accurate delineation of organs at risk (OAR) is essential in modern radiotherapy to avoid under-or overestimation of the dose in the particular organs. However, this process is sensitive to intra/inter-observer variations. The aim of this project was to develop and test a web-based tool to support delineation teaching and evaluation of delineations by a large number of students using a commercial treatment planning system (TPS). Materials and Methods The web-based tool (based on open-source Conquest DICOM server) provides an infrastructure for contouring studies regardless the TPS used for delineation. The system keeps track of individual students generating a separate anonymized dataset per student with a template structure to enforce consistent naming. Interfaces for the teacher were created to 1) prepare individual cases, 2) export analysis results, 3) visualise contours delineated by multiple individuals and 4) set up and apply rules for automated scoring of the student’s contours to a provided Gold Standard. Multiple delineation sessions on the same cases allow for assessing the impact of teaching or guidelines. A student interface was created to allow independent data management, i.e., download of DICOM datasets to delineate, upload of delineated structures, and access to scoring with visual feedback. This interface was embedded in a learning management system (LMS) providing seamless integration of student and course information and allowing students to download, upload and evaluate cases themselves; Fig. 1.