Drug Shortages Add to the Stress of Treatment

Thank you for the editorial, "Anatomy of a Drug Shortage" (Mayer, 2012), published in the Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing. I work at a community cancer center in the Midwest, and we have been forced to refer patients to larger facilities for them to even have a chance at receiving the treatment they require. For example, a patient with hairy cell leukemia was referred elsewhere to receive pentostatin, a drug that would not be supplied to our pharmacy because we did not have the volume of patients to justify it. Fortunately, this gentleman was able to travel several hours away to accomplish this. However, many of our patients would not have the financial or transportation resources to do so.