The Barriers to Reporting Medical Errors in the Nursing Profession and Corrective Actions

Abstract

Introduction: Occurrence of medical error by medical staff can endanger patients' safety. Meanwhile, nurses play a role both as one of the main factors in the occurrence of errors and as a barrier against errors, and sometimes face obstacles to reporting errors. In this regard, this study attempted to identify these barriers and provide corrective solutions. Methods: This qualitative quantification study was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, a researcher-made questionnaire was completed by 214 nurses working in teaching hospitals in Kerman City, Iran. In the second stage, to provide a suitable solution to increase reporting by 23 experts, the centralized group discussion method was used, and then the data were analyzed using the framework analysis method. Results: In the first stage, fear of prosecution and criminal punishment was identified as important obstacle to reporting. In the qualitative stage, three major axes of education, culture, and organization and 15 sub-axes including change of attitude, motivation, job culture, religion, belief of officials, appropriate reward system, use of software, planning, respect, environment, public education and media, use of cyberspace, model presentation, advertising, and communication skills of officials were identified. Conclusion: Because the barriers and issues rose in the reporting of clinical errors, it seems that hospitals have the ability to remove barriers to report clinical errors with the help of cultural, educational, and structural solutions presented in this study. This way, by increasing error reporting, hospitals can improve the quality of health services by reducing individuals' errors.

Keywords

• reports
• medical errors
• nurses