Proportion of medication error reporting and associated factors among nurses: a cross sectional study

BACKGROUND: A medication error (ME) is any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm. Voluntary reporting has a principal role in appreciating the extent and impact of medication errors. Thus, exploration of the proportion of medication error reporting and associated factors among nurses is important to inform service providers and program implementers so as to improve the quality of the healthcare services. METHODS: Institution based quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted among 397 nurses from March 6 to May 10, 2015. Stratified sampling followed by simple random sampling technique was used to select the study participants. The data were collected using structured self-administered questionnaire which was adopted from studies conducted in Australia and Jordan. A pilot study was carried out to validate the questionnaire before data collection for this study. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models were fitted to identify factors associated with the proportion of medication error reporting among nurses. An adjusted odds ratio with 95% confidence interval was computed to determine the level of significance. RESULT: The proportion of medication error reporting among nurses was found to be 57.4%. Regression analysis showed that sex, marital status, having made a medication error and medication error experience were significantly associated with medication error reporting. CONCLUSION: The proportion of medication error reporting among nurses in this study was found to be higher than other studies. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12912-018-0280-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.