Errors in prescribing injectable anticancer drugs: benefits of a pharmaceutical long-term monitoring to improve patient safety in a European comprehensive cancer centre.

Abstract

Objectives: We aimed to assess the impact of pharmacist interventions on injectable chemotherapy prescription and the safety of early prescription practice in an adult daily care unit.

Methods: Prescription errors were recorded before and after implementing corrective measures. Errors identified from the pre-intervention period (i) were analysed to identify areas for improvement. During the post-intervention period (ii) we compared the errors in anticipated prescription (AP) with those in real-time prescriptions (RTP). We performed Chi-square statistical tests (α=0.05).

Results: Before implementing corrective measures (i), 377 errors were recorded (ie, 3.02% of prescriptions). After the implementation of corrective measures (ii), there was a significant decrease in errors, with 94 errors recorded (ie, 1.20% of prescriptions). The error rate in AP and RTP groups was 1.34% and 1.02%, respectively, without a significant difference between the two groups.

Conclusions: This study highlights the importance of prescription review, as well as collaboration between pharmacists and physicians, in reducing prescription errors, whether these prescriptions were anticipated or not.