Chemotherapy medication errors in cancer patients

medication errors are among the problems of health care systems that lead to death or unpleasant consequences for the patient. Cancer patients are much more vulnerable to medication errors, and chemotherapy drugs are considered high-risk drugs due to their narrow therapeutic index and high toxicity. Therefore, increasing awareness of the types of errors caused by chemotherapy drugs can reduce its recurrence and improve the safety of cancer patients.

This study was performed by a narrative review method. Initially, with the keywords of medication errors, chemotherapy and cancer in various databases, related articles from 2005 to 2019 were included in the study and assessed according to the Inclusion criteria intended for this study.

After studying the full text of all articles, errors related to chemotherapy drugs in cancer patients were classified into the following dimensions: Types of errors caused by chemotherapy medication in cancer patients, related causes, severity of errors and ways to prevent chemotherapy medication errors.

Chemotherapy medication errors are more likely to occur, and since most of these errors occur during the administration phase, the use of computer systems such as CPOE and electronic prescribing can reduce chemotherapy medication errors in the first step.