Medication errors in an oncology inpatient setting in India—Audit by clinical pharmacists Akshay Chaudhari 1 , Akshay Mule 1 and Priti Dhande 2 Abstract Background: Good clinical practices and strict vigilance are needed, especially for patients receiving chemotherapy. Regular audits using a specially developed tool need to be conducted in the oncology wards to identify lapses in the use of chemotherapy drugs. Methodology: Observational study was conducted in the adult and paediatric oncology inpatient settings in an Indian tertiary care hospital for a period of 2.5 years. It was an audit of case files of chemotherapy patients for their drug pre- scriptions, medication reconciliation records and adverse drug reports. Data was presented as frequencies and percen- tages. Results: 1.3% medication errors and 0.23% adverse drug reactions were reported during the study period. Majority were transcription (38%) and drug reconstitution errors (29%) and were either in the near-miss or no-harm category. Conclusion: Medication errors were found in the oncology wards, but due to the vigilance of clinical pharmacists, none of the patients were harmed as a consequence of these errors. Keywords Chemotherapy, vigilance, errors, clinical pharmacists Date received: 7 March 2022; revised: 3 December 2022; accepted: 4 December 2022 Introduction Successful provision of optimal and comprehensive patient care requires the participation of multiple health- care disciplines like clinicians, nurses, clinical pharma- cists and paramedical staff including dieticians and physiotherapists. Good clinical practices and strict vigi- lance are needed, especially for patients receiving chemo- therapy. Appropriate policies are necessary to coordinate all the activities throughout the medication-use process of prescribing, preparing or reconstitution, dispensing and administration of chemotherapy, as also for educating and counselling patients. 1 Training healthcare professionals working in oncology wards is as important as regular auditing of their proficiency in providing care to these patients. Standardised guidelines should be established for reconstituting, diluting and label- ling commonly used chemotherapy and other medications that are routinely administered with chemotherapy. The chemotherapy preparation process should include an inde- pendent double check by two separate individuals to look for the correctness of the chemotherapy drug, diluents and volume measurements before the prepared drug is ready for administration. Further, near misses and errors during patient care should be identified and analysed to assess the cause so that safe and effective healthcare can be provided to these patients. Adverse events occurring in these cancer patients receiving chemotherapy are distinct from those occurring with other drugs: firstly, because these anticancer drugs are highly toxic and secondly their dosing needs to be prop- erly calculated for expected efficacy. 1 Department of Clinical Pharmacy & Pharmacovigilance, Bharati Hospital and Research Centre, Pune, India 2 Department of Pharmacology, Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University) Medical College, Pune, India Corresponding author: Priti Pravin Dhande, 9 Natasha Society, D.P. Road, Aundh, Pune 411007, India. Email: pritidhande76@gmail.com Original Article J Oncol Pharm Practice 2023, Vol. 29(7) 1667–1672 © The Author(s) 2022 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/10781552221146529 journals.sagepub.com/home/opp