The attitudes of nurses towards the occurrence and reporting of nursing errors in selected hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2019

Nurses have an undeniable role in preventing nursing and medical errors, and evaluating their attitude towards error reporting, as a strategic indicator, can help nursing managers in preventing errors and improving patient safety and quality of nursing care. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of determining the attitude of nurses towards the occurrence and reporting of nursing errors.

This is a descriptive-cross-sectional study that was conducted on nurses working in general wards and critical care units of hospitals affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences. The number of samples was determined to be 336 people, using Cochran's formula. Stratified random sampling was carried out from the end of June to the beginning of July 2019 among the qualified nurses working in the selected hospitals. Data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire related to the nurses' attitudes towards the occurrence and reporting of nursing errors. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by content validity ration (CVI) method, and it was modified based on the opinion of 10 faculty members in the field of nursing and nursing management, with the overall CVI of 0.81. To determine the trustworthiness and reliability of the tool, its internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach's alpha coefficient) was calculated at 0.781. Data were analyzed by SPSS software version 16, using descriptive analysis and inferential tests such as Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis.

From the nurses’ point of view, the most important cause of nursing errors was management problems. Management problems, such as being blamed, not having enough support, and not having proper feedback from the manager, were the most important reasons for not reporting errors (76.1%). The general attitude of nurses towards error reporting was evaluated at favorable level. Among the components of nurses’ attitude towards reporting nursing error, the component of "error reporting as a strategic indicator is effective in preventing errors" with the mean score of 2.83, and the component of "nursing error reporting should not be done only through a motivational mechanism such as material encouragement" with the mean score 2.16, obtained the highest and lowest scores, respectively. There was a significant relationship between nurses' attitudes towards error reporting, the cause of error, and individual and hospital characteristics (P˂0.05).

According to the findings of this study, it is necessary for nursing managers at all levels of management in hospitals to remove the obstacles to reporting nursing errors by evaluating nurses' attitudes towards reporting nursing errors and also by formulating practical strategies to improve nurses' attitudes towards reporting errors. In this way, it is possible to improve patient safety and consequently, enhance the quality of nursing care.