Guidelines to minimise human error in South African laboratories with regard to therapeutic drug monitoring

Abstract

Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) fulfils an important function in patient health in both the public and private healthcare systems. TDM is based on pharmacokinetic principles within the clinical laboratory and several health professionals, from different disciplines, take part in the management and implementation of the whole TDM process. Communication and collaboration between these professionals are extremely important to ensure beneficial TDM and patient care, however, human error plays a major role in the compromising of the TDM process. In this article, we discuss the most common human errors during the TDM process and give guidelines to prevent them. These guidelines must be implemented during all the TDM phases to ensure the patient receives optimal and reliable healthcare