South West Radiotherapy Network: Radiotherapy Clinical Guidelines

On this page, you will find the regional tumour-specific Radiotherapy Clinical Guidelines, developed by the South West Radiotherapy Operational Delivery Network (SW RT ODN) in collaboration with the front-line Clinical Oncology colleagues across the region.

This page addresses one of the requirements, outlined in the NHS England’s External Beam Radiotherapy Service Specification (170091s), for the development & the implementation of the Radiotherapy Network-wide standardised tumour-specific clinical protocols (guidelines) to reduce unwarranted variation and to improve treatment outcomes.

The updating of these regional protocols is the responsibility of the SW Radiotherapy Network not individual provider trusts.

The Radiotherapy Network Manager is responsible for alerting the Departmental Triumvirate (Head of Service, Head of Physics, Clinical Lead of the Service) of changes to any protocols, with a link to the new document.

The Departmental Triumvirate is responsible for disseminating this information and for identifying documents and processes affected by the change to the protocol. The Radiotherapy Quality Manager should be included in the correspondence.

Local clinical protocols should be in alignment with the regional protocol. Add text to local protocol stating, “This protocol has been confirmed as compliant with Version X of the SW Radiotherapy Network protocol.”