ABSTRACT
The Mashhad drug and poison information center (MDPIC) was officially established in 2000 to provide up-to-date information on medications. The objective of this study is to provide an epidemiologic profile of drug inquiry and poisoning-related phone calls to MDPIC from 2007 to 2017. This article is a descriptive retrospective study in which all inquiries about drugs and poisoning cases received by MDPIC, from 1st January 2007 to 31st December 2017, were retrieved from its database for analysis. A total of 100997 cases were analyzed. The most frequent calls were from individuals in the age group of 18 to 60 years old (70.21%). The majority of callers were women (73.08%). The public made 95.11% of calls, and 4.89% were related to health care professionals. The queries were mainly related to therapeutic uses of drugs (24.03%), followed by adverse drug reactions (18.96%). Given that 99.23% of calls were related to drug information inquiries, the most common drugs questioned about were antimicrobial (12.3%) and vitamin and minerals (10.76%), whereas 0.77% of calls were about poisoning and the majority of them were due to drugs poisoning. Micromedex® was the most commonly used reference to answer the inquiries. This report shows an updated epidemiological evaluation on recorded calls in the drug and poison information center in Mashhad. Since there is no other similar report, this can provide valuable information on the trend of drug usage and may guide further strategies in giving proper information to public and health centers.
ABSTRACT
Using standardized forms for prescription and administration of medications is one of the main solutions for reducing medication errors in the chemotherapy process. Considering the high prevalence and mortality rate of colorectal cancer, in this study we tried to design and validate a standard printed form and evaluate oncologists' and nurses' adherence to this form. This cross-sectional study was performed in Omid hospital, Mashhad, Iran from January 2015 to October 2015. A Chemotherapy form including various demographic and clinical parameters and approved chemotherapy regimens for colorectal cancer was designed by the clinical pharmacist and validated by clinical oncologists working in this center. All eligible patients admitted in this center during this period of time were included in the study. Adherence of the oncologists and nurses to this form and probable medication errors were identified by the pharmacy student. Sixty-seven patients with colorectal cancer and a total of 251 chemotherapy courses were evaluated. All patients received regimens compatible with developed form but in 206 courses (98.56%) of chemotherapy dosing error happened and in most of cases patients received lower than calculated dose (37.8%). Three errors occurred in administration step by nurses which they infused the medication in shorter than recommended duration. In general, oncologists' adherence with developed form for chemotherapy of colorectal cancer was relatively high, except in dose calculation. Avoiding from rounding the calculated medications' doses and precise calculation of patients' body surface area can prevent most of medication errors and reduce risk of adverse drug reaction occurrence.
