Clinical pharmacy in onco-hematology and bone marrow transplant: A valuable contribution to improving patient safety

Abstract

Introduction It is known that clinical pharmacists intercept prescribing errors and contribute to patient safety in several medical specialties. The aim of this study was to identify, quantify and classify prescribing errors and pharmacist interventions carried out in onco-hematology and bone marrow transplant inpatient units. Methods This was a prospective and quantitative study, conducted from February 2018 to July 2018 in onco-hematology and bone marrow transplant inpatient units of a tertiary teaching hospital in Brazil. A pharmacist detected prescribing errors and performed interventions. The type and incidence of prescribing errors, error severity, type of pharmacist interventions, potential impact of interventions in patient care, and intervention acceptance rates were evaluated. Results A total of 1172 prescriptions were evaluated, 9% of them contained errors (total of 135 errors), and the most common error was related to prescribing the wrong dose (31.8%). Wrong dose and omission of drug were the two most frequent errors in onco-hematology, while wrong dose followed by inappropriate dilution were the most frequent in bone marrow transplantation. The pharmacist performed 135 interventions and the most common intervention was related to the treatment regimen (41.5%). Serious errors and very significant pharmacist interventions were the most frequent in both inpatient units. The acceptance rate of pharmacist interventions was high (90%). Conclusions Clinical pharmacy improves patient safety and quality of care in onco-hematology and bone marrow transplant inpatient units.

Preventing Potential Patient Harm Through Clinical Content Interventions During Oncology Clinical Trial Implementation

“…The interventions identified in this study are not unique to the clinical trial realm, as similar types of patient safety interventions are common practices within standard of care, particularly within the oncology pharmacy domain 18,19 . While standard of care interventions are well documented, to our knowledge, this is the first study to highlight interventions identified during EHR clinical content development to potentially prevent patient harm.…”

“…The interventions identified in this study are not unique to the clinical trial realm, as similar types of patient safety interventions are common practices within standard of care, particularly within the oncology pharmacy domain. 18,19 While standard of care interventions are well documented, to our knowledge, this is the first study to highlight interventions identified during EHR clinical content development to potentially prevent patient harm. Dedicating a team of centralized clinical specialists to review and translate clinical trial documents for implementation is one method of establishing best practice institutional guidelines for enhancing patient safety.…”

Role of clinical pharmacist in the palliative care of adults and elderly patients with cancer: A scoping review

“…After having highlighted the role of the clinical pharmacist in specific fields such as onco-hematology and bone marrow transplant, 29 pediatric hematology-oncology, 30 and providing patient counselling for patients with gastrointestinal cancer receiving oral anticancer treatment (capecitabine), 31 we discussed another specific field in this paper which is palliative care for patients with cancer. This scoping review identified 14 relevant studies on the activities and-or services provided by clinical pharmacists in the palliative care of adults and elderly patients with cancer.…”

Therapeutic pathways of allogeneic and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation recipients: a hospital pharmacist’s perspective

“…Potential drug-drug interactions (DDIs) are particularly common among HSCT patients in the bone marrow transplantation unit (1) . The identification and resolution of drug-related problems (DRP) constitute a very important role of the clinical pharmacist in managing drug therapy, and several general guidelines and recommendations have been provided to define the role of hospital pharmacists in caring for HSCT patients (2)(3)(4)(5)(6) .…”