Chemo drug blunder at KKH

Recently, KKH made a blunder out of administering chemo drugs by continuous infusion to two cancer patients.

The patients received the recommended doses of chemo in a matter of hours instead of over 3 days, for one, and 5 days for the other.

KKH claimed that the blunder came about because the two pumps for longer and shorter infusion times were similar in appearance.

According to the media, KKH seemingly responded accordingly and had the situation under control. However, according to blog postings made by the son of one of the patients, this was not the case. The attitude and response of this patient's onco were even more appalling.

From my experience at NCC and the blog posts of how KKH handled the situation, I got the idea that KKH falls short of expectations. I am really surprised by their slow reaction, and I wonder why it was the pharmacists who came to them first.

While I was undergoing chemo, there were several times when I mentioned to the attending nurse that I was itching, immediately the drip was stopped and the doctor on duty was paged. While waiting for the doctor to turn up, the nurses would be checking on me and even asked to see the itching spots.

Once, the chemo drug leaked and burnt the skin on my arm causing blisters. On advice from my onco, I went to the ATU to show the nurses my blisters and burnt marks. The doctor on duty was called, and the nurse took measurements and photos of my wounds as well. I had asked why they had to do that and was told that it had to be on record.

As I was always asking questions, the moment I cast any doubt about the prescription, dosage or drug, the attending nurse would call my onco for confirmation. They would not proceed without my onco's okay.

When handling such toxic drugs as chemo, the persons administering should exercise extra caution as the toxic drugs would be injected into a patient's body, and at risk here is the patient's health and life.