Background:

Medication errors (ME) are an unintentional failure in the oncological treatment process. The analysis of ME is necessary, since in recent years, there has been a great diversity of cancer therapies.

Objective:

To identify the factors that predispose and trigger medication error in the State Oncological Center ISSEMYM.

Method:

Retrospective cross-sectional study in which the proportion of medication error extracted from the database of the clinical pharmacy service during the 2015-2020 period were quantified, classified according to the Ruiz-Garabo update. For the analysis, descriptive statistics were used with frequency values, percentages, and contingency tables with the chi-square test (χ2) and odds ratio.

Results:

A total of 10,542 medication error were obtained, of which 7,725 were avoided, which shows the importance of the participation of the pharmaceutical staff involved in the pharmacological therapeutic stage.

Conclusion:

The pharmacist ensures the continuous improvement of the procedures and the guarantee of patient safety oncology.