Assessing the nursing error rate and related factors from the view of nursing staff

BACKGROUND: Error is an inevitable aspect of all the professions particularly health and treatment-related jobs and it should be acknowledged that committing it cannot absolutely be preventable. Among the causes that necessitate the evaluation of nursing errors, it should be noted that errors not only lead to damage and mortality for the patients, but also they are one of the obvious and costly problems in the hospitals. It is believed that nurses have the focal role in committing nursing errors.The main objective of this study was to identify nursing errors and the related factors. METHODS: This was a descriptive-correlative study which was conducted in 2010. 239 nurses and head nurses who were working in the selected hospitals in Isfahan were selected randomly and participated in this research. In order to collect the data, two questionnaires were used, each one consisting of three sections of the demographic data, questions about the type of error and the effective factors for making the errors. RESULTS: The highest rate of error was reported about the lack of compiling and reviewing the medical history of the patient (31.75%) and also disregarding the appropriate time for prescription of the medicine (31.75%). Besides, the nurses and head nurses believed in more than one factor for committing the errors and mentioned the managerial factors (84.2%) and patient-related factors (50.5%) as the most important and the least important causes for the commitment of errors respectively. Moreover, there was a direct relationship between gender, ward, and having an extra job with the score of the nursing errors. CONCLUSIONS: Attempts for reducing and controlling the nursing errors can rely on the usage of systemic approaches for assessing the effective factors, removing these factors as much as possible, and designing a system for increasing the level of reporting these errors for identifying the weak points and jeopardizing factors.