Investigating the Frequency and Causes of Nursing Errors from the Perspectives of Emergency Department Nurses

Emergency department is a wide and complicated place and admits different kind of patients because of this factors it is a talented place for occurring nursing errors.nursing errors are evaluated as an important index to show the lower quality of health care service.the aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency and causes of nursing errors and prevention strategies from the perspectives of emergency department nurses in selected hospitals affiliated to Iran university of Medical Sciences in 2021.

The present study was a descriptive research conducted on the nurses who were working in the emergency wards of the selected hospitals (Hazratrasoul, Firozgar, Haft e tir) affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2021. 101 emergency nurses participated in this study.to collect data a questionnaire including (demographic characteristics, frequency of errors, the causes of errors and prevention strategies) was used. Generally, 101 questionnaires collected and data analysis using descriptive statistics by SPSS was performed.

The results showed that not using of protective equipment such as gloves, masks an (38%), non-compliance with sterile technique (36%), not having a proper connection with patient during the nursing procedure (35%), lack of educating the patients before discharge (32%) had the most frequency between errors. The most important causes of nursing errors from the perspective of emergency nurses were being overcrowded and busy (64%), fatigue because of high volume of work (53%) and staff shortage toward patients (52%).also the most important preventive strategies were increase the number of nurses (75%), lower the nursing work time (67%) and employ experienced nurses in emergency wards (54%).

Prevention is the best way of reducing errors so by recognizing the frequency of nursing errors and causes of that and preventing strategies in the view of emergency nurses can prevent the incidence of errors and promote patient safety and care quality.