Home medication support for childhood cancer: family-centered design and testing.

Purpose: Errors in the use of medications at home by children with cancer are common, and interventions to support correct use are needed. We sought to (1) engage stakeholders in the design and development of an intervention to prevent errors in home medication use, and (2) evaluate the acceptability and usefulness of the intervention.

Methods: We convened a multidisciplinary team of parents, clinicians, technology experts, and researchers to develop an intervention using a two-step user-centered design process.

Multisite parent-centered risk assessment to reduce pediatric oral chemotherapy errors.

Purpose: Observational studies describe high rates of errors in home oral chemotherapy use in children. In hospitals, proactive risk assessment methods help front-line health care workers develop error prevention strategies. Our objective was to engage parents of children with cancer in a multisite study using proactive risk assessment methods to identify how errors occur at home and propose risk reduction strategies.

Medication errors in the home: a multisite study of children with cancer.

Objective: As home medication use increases, medications previously managed by nurses are now managed by patients and their families. Our objective was to describe the types of errors occurring in the home medication management of children with cancer.

Methods: In a prospective observational study at 3 pediatric oncology clinics in the northeastern and southeastern United States, patients undergoing chemotherapy and their parents were recruited from November 2007 through April 2011.