Preventing chemotherapy errors: updating guidelines to meet new challenges.

Abstract

The full guidelines appear in the online version of this issue (www.ajhp.org). Despite the publishing of the ASHP Guidelines on Preventing Medication Errors with Antineoplastic Agents in 2002,1 medication errors with chemotherapy and biotherapy have continued to occur. With evolving technologies and new anticancer therapies, cancer treatment regimens have become more complex, with even greater potential to cause medication errors. The original version of the guidelines was uniquely comprehensive by including all parts of the healthcare system involved with medication use for patients with cancer. This comprehensive approach was retained in the updated guidelines (published as an online-only article in this issue) because every perspective must be considered to promote the safe use of chemotherapy. The current guidelines also build on and complement other standards that have been published since 2002.2 Given the diversity of agents now used to treat cancer, care was taken to provide a new and more complete definition of chemotherapy and biotherapy intended to encompass any medication used in cancer treatment. (For simplicity, the term chemotherapy is used throughout the guidelines and this summary.) This broad definition includes medications administered by all routes. The guidelines emphasize that all medications falling under this definition, regardless of indication or route of administration, are high-risk medications that require the recommended safety procedures.