Introduction: Prescribing errors can happen unintentionally during the prescribing process, or when choosing a treatment therapy. Prescribing errors have the highest prevalence amongst common error types related to chemotherapy medication in outpatient settings. According to the Joint Commission International (JCI), prescriptions should be reviewed for appropriateness by someone else than the prescriber or practitioner to prevent medication errors.
Aim: The study was aimed to map out the existing type and amount of occurring deviations in prescribing and to clarify the current chemotherapy prescribing practices at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Helsinki University Hospital. Similar research has not been published in Finland before.
Methods and patients: The researcher selected patients randomly from the daily outpatient attendance list following a predetermined numerical order. Data was collected by conducting a medication verification review in line with the JCI guidance by a clinical pharmacist the day before the patient's clinic appointment using the available medical documentation. A clinical pharmacist evaluated findings from prescriptions and contacted an oncologist if the findings were considered clinically significant.
Results: A clinical pharmacist verified prescriptions from 101 patients for appropriateness and found discrepancies in four percent of the prescriptions (n = 4/101). The oncologist approved 50 percent of the suggested amendments by the pharmacist as clinically significant (n = 2/4). The study revealed that patient's regular home medications were not always correctly recorded into the database, so verification of medicine interactions could not be trusted as completely accurate. It took on average 16 min per patient to perform a medication verification review. The process was slowed down by the lack of detailed enough protocols for this purpose and the current patient care record system not having structural formatting of data entry.
Conclusions: Verification of prescriptions provides a tool to identify prescribing discrepancies and to prevent unintended medication errors affecting patients. The development of detailed protocols and guidelines, as well as an appropriate training program, would support pharmacists in compiling clinical medication reviews for chemotherapy patients. More research is needed to further develop the operating model in Finland. Information gathered from this study can be used for identifying training requirements.
Keywords: Medication error; chemotherapy; medication appropriateness review; oncology; pharmacy; verification of cancer medicine.