Medication errors involving oral chemotherapy Journal Article
| Authors: | Weingart, S. N.; Toro, J.; Spencer, J.; Duncombe, D.; Gross, A.; Bartel, S.; Miransky, J.; Partridge, A.; Shulman, L. N.; Connor, M. |
| Article Title: | Medication errors involving oral chemotherapy |
| Abstract: | BACKGROUND: Given the expanding use of oral chemotherapies, the authors set out to examine errors in the prescribing, dispensing, administration, and monitoring of these drugs. METHODS: Reports were collected of oral chemotherapy-associated medication errors from a medical literature and Internet search and review of reports to the Medication Errors Reporting Program and MEDMARX. The authors solicited incident reports from 14 comprehensive cancer centers, and also collected incident reports, pharmacy interventions, and prompted clinician reports from their own center. They classified the type of incident, severity, stage in the medication use process, and type of medication error. They examined the yield of the various reporting methods to identify oral chemotherapy-related medication errors. RESULTS: The authors identified 99 adverse drug events, 322 near misses, and 87 medical errors with low risk of harm. Of the 99 adverse drug events, 20 were serious or life-threatening, 52 were significant, and 25 were minor. The most common medication errors involved wrong dose (38.8%), wrong drug (13.6%), wrong number of days supplied (11.0%), and missed dose (10.0%). The majority of errors resulted in a near miss; however, 39.3% of reports involving the wrong number of days supplied resulted in adverse drug events. Incidents derived from the literature search and hospital incident reporting system included a larger percentage of adverse drug events (73.1% and 58.8%, respectively) compared with other sources. CONCLUSIONS: Ensuring oral chemotherapy safety requires improvements in the way these drugs are ordered, dispensed, administered, and monitored. © 2010 American Cancer Society. |
| Keywords: | adult; cancer chemotherapy; child; controlled study; unclassified drug; major clinical study; drug withdrawal; antineoplastic agents; capecitabine; temozolomide; follow up; antineoplastic agent; imatinib; liver toxicity; multiple cycle treatment; breast cancer; statistics; bone marrow suppression; nausea; incidence; cyclophosphamide; clinical protocol; patient monitoring; oncology; procarbazine; acute lymphoblastic leukemia; childhood cancer; drug hypersensitivity; prescription; drug fatality; gastrointestinal toxicity; patient care; drug surveillance program; adverse drug reaction reporting systems; adverse outcome; prescriptions; patient safety; patient compliance; medical specialist; physician; medical literature; drug monitoring; drug toxicity; multivitamin; medical documentation; drug dose titration; administration, oral; metoclopramide; family; risk management; mercaptopurine; oral drug administration; drug overdose; thyroid disease; hospital information system; medication errors; nurse; propylthiouracil; spontaneous abortion; adverse drug events; incident reports; oral chemotherapy; antitussive agent; benzonatate; materna; computerized order entry system; friend; incident report; medication error; pharmacist; pregnant woman |
| Journal Title: | Cancer |
| Volume: | 116 |
| Issue: | 10 |
| ISSN: | 0008-543X |
| Publisher: | Wiley Blackwell |
| Date Published: | 2010-05-15 |
| Start Page: | 2455 |
| End Page: | 2464 |
| Language: | English |
| DOI: | 10.1002/cncr.25027 |
| PUBMED: | 20225328 |
| PROVIDER: | scopus |
| DOI/URL: | |
| Notes: | --- - "Cited By (since 1996): 1" - "Export Date: 20 April 2011" - "CODEN: CANCA" - "Source: Scopus" |
