Abstract
Objective. Medication errors are the most common types of medical errors which considerably endanger the patient safety. This survey aimed to study the factors influencing not reporting on medication errors from the nurses' viewpoints in Abbasi Hospital of Miandoab, Iran. Methods. This was a cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study conducted in 2012 in which all nurses (n = 100) working in different inpatient units were studied using a consensus method. Required data were collected using a questionnaire. Collected data were analyzed through some statistical tests including Independent t-test, ANOVA, and chi-square. Results. According to the results, the most important reasons for not reporting on medication errors were related to the managerial factors (3.56 ± 0.996), factors related to the process of reporting (3.32 ± 0.797), and fear of the consequences of reporting (3.01 ± 1.039), respectively. Also, there was a significant relationship between employment status and fear of the Consequences of reporting on medication errors (P < 0.008). Conclusion. This study results showed that managerial factors had the greatest role in the refusal of reporting on medication errors. Therefore, for example, establishing a mechanism to improve quality rather than focus only on finding the culprits and blaming them can result in improving the patient safety.
Highlights
One of the most fundamental components of health care quality is the patient safety [1]
The results showed that the highest mean score in the managerial factors domain was related to “the heads’ focus only on finding the culprits and blaming them, regardless of other factors involved in the occurrence of errors” (3.674 ± 1.21)
The highest mean scores in the domain of fear of the consequences of reporting was related to “fear of judicial affairs following reporting on medication errors” (3.68 ± 1.21), and in the domain of factors related to the process of reporting was associated with “lack of a clear definition of medication errors” (3.144 ± 1.29)
Summary
One of the most fundamental components of health care quality is the patient safety [1]. The patient safety is a priority for every health care system which follows the ensuring and improving of the quality of health care [2] and is one of the main concerns of all health care systems [3, 4]. The patient safety is known as to avoid injuries to the patients or occurring unexpected adverse events of health care processes [6]. Adverse events and medical errors are the main factors endangering the patient safety which are the most important problems of all health care systems, and all of these systems try to reduce their resulted injuries [5]. The rate of medical errors throughout the world is so high that is accounted for one of the five major causes of deaths [9]
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