Evaluation of the Medication Safety of Chemotherapy Drugs

Abstract

To evaluate the medication safety of chemotherapy drugs at a tertiary care hospital, with complete reporting of prescription errors, classifying prescription errors, complete detailing of watched medication administration errors (MAEs) by nurses, ordering watched MAEs, and figuring improvement methodologies. Likewise, in relation to side effects, how to overcome side effects, which antiemetic treatments to use, how to survey the appropriateness of requesting and apportioning. An imminent, observational, non-interventional contemplate study was driven at the Oncology Department, Baptist Hospital, Bangalore for half a year. All the data was collected from patient medical records according to case record structure. An aggregate of 70 patients tolerating chemotherapy were observed for information on a sort of side effects, prescription missteps and other relevant information like demographic findings, treatments, and drugs used to manage the adverse effects (AEs) collected from the patient’s medical records. The data was characterized reliant on various parameters. The watched side effects according to different organ frameworks were orchestrated and appeared differently in relation to the distributed writing and bundle embeds. Among the 70 patients, 22 (31.4%) were males and 48 (68.57%) were females. Moreover, the age interval within these two groups was of 20–65. From the 70 patients, the number of chemotherapy cycles was of one for 14 (20%) patients, two for 16 (22.85%), three for 16 (22.85%), four for 5 (7.14%), five for 6 (8.57%), six for 9 (12.85%), and more than six for 4 (5.71%) patients, mostly due to maintenance chemotherapy. The evaluation of our information uncovered that the cancer with the most elevated predominance was breast cancer (24.28%), pursued by blood and bone marrow cancer (5.71%) in females, whereas in males were blood and bone marrow (4.28%), followed by lung cancer (2.85%), non-Hodgkin lymphoma (2.85%), and colon cancer (2.85%). The present study demonstrated that in both gender groups, the most influenced organ framework was gastro intestinal tract (GIT), trailed by skin and subcutaneous tissue, musculoskeletal, blood and nervous system. The most prescribed antiemetic drug was ondansetron (81.42%), and the normally endorsed chemotherapy agents in our setting were shown to be cisplatin (21.42%), carboplatin (17.14%), and paclitaxel (14.28%). The total percentage of errors on the 70 prescriptions was 24.28. Most of the errors were due to drug–drug interactions (10%). The total percentage of errors in drug administration performed by nurses was found to be 11.42%, out of which in 2.85% of the cases, it was used the wrong drug dose. The adverse impacts related with the usage of anticancer medication were surveyed for half a year. The AEs most commonly experienced suggest that for all intents and purposes, all the patients accepting cytotoxic drugs suffered at least one AE. The critical announced MAE rates on our hospital ward (0.04% of medication administration and 0.03% MAE/patient admission) send out an impression of being generally low due to the utilization of current security rules. Emphasize on deep understanding of MAE at individual foundations, is likely going to result in important procedure changes, improved effectiveness of MAE detailing, and various focal points.