Table 1.

Coding scheme for classification of medication‐related incidents

Medication phase	Description (inclusion/exclusion criteria)
Prescribing	‘All [incidents] that occur during the decision process and in prescribing/ordering a medication for a patient’ (Krzyzaniak & Bajorek, 2016)
Order communication	All incidents that occur at the stage of communicating the prescription for dispensing to pharmacy Includes also incidents related to the ‘ready for chemo tick’ (EMM tick box used for communicating doctors’ okay to proceed with administration)
Dispensing	All incidents about ‘product labelling, packaging, and nomenclature, compounding, dispensing, distribution’ (NCC MERP, 2018) ‘All [incidents] that occur during the interpretation of medication prescriptions by the pharmacy staff and the subsequent selection, preparation, labelling and distribution of medication’ (Krzyzaniak & Bajorek, 2016)
Administration	‘All [incidents] that occur whilst a medication is being administered to a patient’ (Krzyzaniak & Bajorek, 2016) Includes also: incidents related to medication compounding and preparation by nurses on the ward incidents related to storing and safe keeping of medication on the ward incidents related to leaking/breaking of IV bags if during the administration to a patient (otherwise coded as other)
Education	All incidents that relate to informing the patient or family about the medication
Monitoring	‘All [incidents] associated with the monitoring of clinical and/or laboratory data that assess the patient's response to the administered drug therapy i.e. through therapeutic drug‐monitoring practices’ (Krzyzaniak & Bajorek, 2016) Includes also incidents about monitoring and recording of fluids
Use	All incidents that relate to a patient's or families’ use of the medication—for example, giving/taking medications, making decisions about medications
Other	All other incidents where a medication was involved but incident did not occur during one of the above‐listed stages. Includes also: Incidents related to chemotherapy protocols (missing, wrong, not up to date) Incidents related to the ‘activation’ of chemotherapy in the EMM system Control of/accounting for controlled drugs Incidents related to IV lines and leaking of bags that did not occur during administration Incidents that occur at the phase of pharmacy verification of the prescription Incidents that occur at the time of patient discharge or transfer
Unclear	Incidents where there is not enough information to determine at what stage the incident occurred
Not applicable	When there is no medication involved in the incident

Medication phases derived from NCC MERP definition of medication errors (NCC MERP, 2018), with additional definitions (Krzyzaniak & Bajorek, 2016).

Abbreviations: chemo, chemotherapy; EMM, electronic medication management system; IV, intravenous.