Letters
Computerised prescribing of chemotherapy reduces errors
EDITOR,--S M Cotter advocates computerised prescribing as a useful addition to a clinical pharmacy service.1 In 1993 we introduced a computerised prescribing system for cytotoxic chemotherapy in order to improve patients' care, rationalise prescribing, and increase the quality, clarity, and safety of prescriptions. Other advantages include improved compliance with protocols, ease of access to clinical data, a decrease in prescribing time, a reduction in errors of transcription, and help with audit.2 3 4
At any time up to 50 research and standard chemotherapy protocols are available in our unit. Chemotherapy regimens are often complex, yet compliance is essential for patients' safety and to maintain good clinical practice. Most prescribing for chemotherapy is done by senior house officers undertaking the medical oncology attachment on a general medicine rotation. They do not normally have previous experience in oncology and are not expected to know all the intricacies of chemotherapy regimens. Pressures to reduce junior
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
- Avoiding drug errors
- David S Nunn
BMJ 1995 311: 1367.[Extract] [Full Text]
This Article
- Full text
- Respond to this article
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when responses are posted
- Alert me when a correction is posted
Services
- Email this article to a friend
- Find similar articles in BMJ
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Related Content
Bookmark with
What's new
Latest blogs
Find BMJ on:
Services
Tools
Online poll
Resources
Rapid responses for this article
There are no rapid responses for this article. Print issues
