New auditors for the OECI Accreditation and Designation Programme

---

The OECI Accreditation & Designation (A&D) Programme aims to help European cancer centres implement a quality system for oncology, and provide cancer patients in Europe with equal access to high quality cancer care, backed up by excellent training and translational research.

As part of the A&D programme a multidisciplinary team of professionals in oncology (nursing, medical, quality, research) visits cancer centres for a peer review. This two-day visit is to assess the quality of cancer care, education and research within the centre, produce a report and work together with the centre to formulate recommendations for improvement. The OECI auditors are highly skilled in their own fields, and in addition are trained in how to perform a peer review audit for OECI in such a way as ensures complete consistency within the programme.

As many new centres are entering the A&D Programme from all parts of Europe, OECI has been looking to expand the team of expert auditors. On 4th and 5th March 2019 a group of 14 new auditors was trained during a two-day training course in Villa Verganti Veronesi in Inveruno, Italy. A earlier group of 18 new auditors was trained on 19 and 20th November 2018.  The new auditors come from cancer institutes all over Europe (Denmark, Lithuania, Estonia, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, Croatia and Slovenia).

The training course was provided by Patrick Corstiaans from KERTEZA (kerteza.com), an independent training company for auditors. During the two training days the auditors were informed about the content of the standards, how to prepare for an audit using the web-based e-tool, how to perform interviews and how to report the findings in the e-tool. During the second day the trainees performed interactive mock interviews.

This now means that we have around 60 trained auditors in the field for OECI.  We are confident that our programme has