Chemotherapy Administration Safety Standards for Preventing Medication Error in Patients with Hodgkin and Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma

Antineoplastic drugs are among medications that have narrow therapeutic index and high toxicity. For this reason, medication errors in patients with cancer are important and there have been myriads of efforts to decrease them. In this study, we attempted to assess the medication errors by designing chemotherapy standard forms for patients with Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas.
This cross-sectional study was performed in Omid and Imam Reza Hospitals, Mashhad, Iran from January 2016 to October 2016.The forms have been designed by clinical pharmacist based on available international guidelines and validated by clinical oncologists working in these two centers. Therapeutic regimens were selected by clinical oncologists and adherence of the oncologists and nurses to this form and probable medication errors were identified by the pharmacy students.
In 206 visits of 62 Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients, overall 790 antineoplastic drugs were administered to patients in whom 160 drugs were associated with medication error. The most common errors included improper dose (65%) and wrong infusion time (35%). One of the most important reasons for dosing errors was miscalculation of the BSA (40%).
This study shows that about two third of errors were improper dose. It seems that chemotherapy standard forms, if properly followed by nurses and physicians, could be useful and effective to reduce medication errors.