Attitudes and beliefs of doctors towards medication error reporting

Abstract

A sample of 15 hospital doctors, from four clinical specialties within an acute hospital trust, was interviewed. Doctors were questioned on definition of medication errors, causes and methods to reduce errors, importance and knowledge of existing reporting systems and barriers to reporting. All doctors believed that reporting errors were important in order to learn from mistakes but this was not borne out in practice. Clinical incident forms were considered too time‐consuming to complete and “fell into a black hole”, since no feed back was provided. Disciplinary action was not felt to be a barrier to reporting and the need for honesty was essential. Overwork and lack of information led to errors as well as pharmacists making junior doctors lazy prescribers. Where mistakes were made, doctors perceived that, despite a support ethic amongst peers, there was not a no blame culture outside the hospital. The study concluded that errors should be a learning experience but only if relevant and timely feedback is given.