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

ObjectivesWe 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. MethodsPrescription 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 (alpha=0.05). ResultsBefore 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. ConclusionsThis 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.