The Survey of the Barriers to Reporting Medication Errors from the Perspective of the Nurses

Medical errors are among the important challenges threatening the health systems in all of the countries around the world. Among the most common recognized medical errors are the medication errors. One way for preventing from such medication errors from happening is to encourage the staff members to report their errors and mistakes in order to be able to establish policies and strategies for eliminating the factors effective on reporting the medication errors and therefore to prevent them from reiteration. Therefore, the present study objective is the survey of the barriers to reporting the medication errors from the perspective of the nurses.

the present study is a descriptive research which has been conducted on 119 nurses who were selected based on a random method in 2016. To gather the information required for the study a two-part questionnaire was applied the first part of which was related to the demographic characteristics and the second part was related to the factors effective on not reporting the medication errors. Finally, the questionnaires were collected and the data was analyzed by the use of SPSS 19 software and descriptive statistics.

the individuals’ average age was 28.86 ± 6.54, 101 individuals were women and 87 individuals had previously participated in ethics-related courses. The highest mean score was obtained in the managerial factors aspect. Also, the highest mean score in the components was pertained to the items “being reproached by the authorities” and “being reproached by the respective physician” and the lowest mean score belonged to the item “the error effect on salary deductions”.

nurses play a significant and critical role in preventing from the medication errors, but it has to be announced that nurses’ mistakes are unavoidable. Therefore, the managers should provide safe and appropriate conditions for nurses’ reporting of the errors.