Standardizing the expression and nomenclature of cancer treatment regimens

Guidelines for describing cancer chemotherapy regi mens in all aspects of drug development, including treatment protocols, order forms, and product labels, are proposed. To complement the approaches to reducing medication errors that have been recommended by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and others, pharmacists at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, with the input of oncology pharmacists from diverse areas of practice, developed guidelines for expressing chemo therapy dosage schedules and treatment regimens. The guidelines present standards that are broadly applicable and can be adopted by other institutions. Clear and unambiguous expression of all medication orders and consistency of treatment descriptions are suggested. Written treatment plans and orders should contain enough information to allow health care providers from diverse disciplines to compare them with published treatment descriptions and investiga tional protocols and must therefore include planned dosages and schedules expressed in patient-specific units. In general, drug dosages should be expressed as the amount of drug administered from a single con tainer. When ordering drugs that are part of complex or combination-drug regimens, prescribers should write as many of the orders at one time as is possible so that continuity might be preserved. Standard rules are proposed for describing che motherapy regimens.