Nurses’ Perspectives About Reasons for Not Reporting Medical Errors in Educational Hospitals, Ahvaz, Iran

Abstract

Background: Reporting of medical errors is an approach to identify and prevent errors in hospitals.
 Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine the barriers to error rError Reporting; Nurse; Hospital; Ahvazeport from the nurses’ viewpoints in Ahvaz Educational hospitals.
 Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was done on 206 nurses working in educational hospitals of Ahvaz selected by stratified random sampling. The measurement tool used in this study was a researcher-made questionnaire, which its validity was confirmed by content validity, and its reliability using Cronbach’s alpha was calculated to be 0.84. Data collection was performed from April to June 2019.
 Results: The causes of failure to error reporting included educational, attitudinal, process, structural, and managerial factors. The total mean score of the factors causing non-reporting of errors was 3.88 ± 0.53, which was between 3 and 4 (“important”). Also, educational, attitudinal, and process factors were reported as “very important” for nurses. Structural and managerial factors were rated reported “important” by nurses over 90% of nurses rated educational, attitudinal, and process factors as important and very important, and more than 70% of them rated structural and managerial factors as important and very important. Nurses with different levels of education or work experiences had different scores in reasons for not reporting errors.
 Conclusions: Some educational, attitudinal, process, structural, and managerial factors were critical reasons for not reporting errors. In order to reduce same errors in the future and promoting health care quality, officials need to develop strategies to remove barriers and consider the reasons for not reporting errors in nurses’ educational programs using team-based and forward-looking approaches, adopting an impersonal and systematic approach, and finally, modifying error reporting rules.