Quality audits of nuclear medicine practices in Namibia

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) introduced a Quality Management Audits in Nuclear Medicine (QUANUM) programme, to improve nuclear medicine practice standards aligned with international standards through self-assessments. The absence of quality management audits in nuclear medicine departments could potentially result in a compromise in the safety and quality of patient care. To date, there is no evidence that quality audits have been conducted in nuclear medicine departments of this middle-income country.

This quality audit therefore assessed conformance to the IAEA QUANUM programme in four nuclear medicine departments. The study adopted a quantitative methodological exploratory approach. The IAEA QUANUM programme was used, and data was collected via document analysis in four nuclear medicine departments within a middle-income African setting. This quality audit was done to evaluate each department’s overall conformance. QUANUM comprises a series of checklist questionnaires designed to audit nuclear medicine services’ overall activity such as clinical practice, management, radiopharmacy, general and radiation safety, quality assurance, operations and services amongst others with the intention of continuous service improvement. Each checklist has criteria that are referred to as counts. The checklists were scored based on conformance or non-conformance during the audit.

Ethics Certificate number: CPUT/HW-REC 2021/H25