Role of clinical pharmacologist in detection and prevention of administration errors: an observational and interventional study

Abstract The aim of this study was to describe and evaluate the prevention of drug administration  errors by clinical pharmacologist interventions in patients with cancer. This observational study was performed in the hematology-oncology ward of an academic hospital. The clinical pharmacologist in coordination with the professors of the ward reviewed patients’ medical records and monitored patients’ drug treatment regimen. All administration errors detected by clinical pharmacologist in 296 patients between Mars to September 2017 were reported in the format of medical consultation and  his comments and recommendations was told to the residents and nurses to reform them. SPSS version 18.0 was used for data analysis. Descriptive statistic was used to determine frequency of each type of delivery errors..A total of 296 patients included in this study with a median age of 46.55 years of which 47.97% were female. 71.28% of the admitted patients experienced at least one medication error that is equal to a median of 1.33 errors per patient. Most administration errors were related to improper distance between the two drugs (52.40%), improper dilution (31.14%) and inappropriate infusion rate (13.17%)respectively. In 2.28% of errors, the clinical pharmacologist find that  laboratory results werenot reported. Adverse drug reactions were 1.01% of the errors, which was diagnosed by the clinicalpharmacologist. Nurses accepted 371 out of these 395 (93.92%)clinical pharmacologist’s recommendations. The trust of physicians and nurses  in the views of the clinical pharmacologist led to a large part of these errors being accepted and resolved.