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Background & Aim: Administration of medications is an important part of treatment and care provided by nurses. Medication errors can create serious problems to patients and health system. The aim of this study was to determine the reasons of medication errors and the barriers of error reporting from nurses&apos viewpoints.

Methods & Materials: In this study, we randomly selected five hospitals in Tabriz and Maragheh. Then, 200 nurses who were randomly selected for the study completed the study questionnaire. The questionnaire included 21 items about medication errors and 19 items about the barriers of error reporting, based on five degree Likert scale. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS-15.

Results: In this study, from the viewpoint of nurses, the most important reasons of medication errors were hospital units (3.70±0.84), shortages of nursing staff, nuring burn-out and high workload. Regarding barriers of error reporting, the most cited barriers were management factors (3.78±0.89), fear of legal issues, inappropriate definition of medication error and inappropriate reactions of authorities.

Conclusion: We recommend increasing the number of nursing staff, adjusting the workload of nursing staff, using special forms for reporting errors and providing an atmosphere of intimacy between authorities and staffs.

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Background & Aim: Culturally sensitive care is an essential component of professional development process and one of the predictive factors of nurses’ cultural competency. This care is the most important approach to improve the quality of nursing care in culturally diverse groups. The current study aimed to explore the consequences of culturally sensitive care in pediatric nursing.

Methods & Materials: This study is a qualitative study using conventional content analysis. 25 nurses and 9 parents were purposefully selected with maximum variation sampling from the pediatric wards of three referral teaching hospitals in Tabriz and Tehran in 2015-2016. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and field notes and simultaneously analyzed using MAXQDA software version 10.

Results: The consequences of culturally sensitive care in pediatric nursing emerged in two categories: justice-based care (with three subcategories: the lack of cultural bias, culture-based communication and effective participation) and cultural satisfaction (with two subcategories: reduced cultural stress and safe care). Culturally sensitive care prevents misunderstandings and improves nurse-child/parents communication and leads to parents’ honesty to share information and express cultural needs. The expression of cultural needs decreases stress levels in parents and children and results in safe care by reducing intractable traditional treatment.

Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, it is suggested that effective culturally sensitive interventions in pediatric wards should be included in in-service courses and nursing curriculum.

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Background & Aim: Insufficient health literacy is a major barrier to self-care in patients with heart failure. The purpose of this study was to determine relationship between health literacy and self-care behaviors in patients with heart failure.
Methods & Materials: In this correlational study, 100 patients with heart failure who were referred to teaching hospitals in Qom were selected through the convenience sampling method in 2017. The data collection tools were the heart failure-specific health literacy scale, the self-care of heart failure index (SCHFI) and the hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the Pearson’s correlation coefficient and multiple liner regression analysis on the SPSS software version 16.
Results: More than half of the patients had a moderate level of self-care. The highest and lowest health literacy scores were respectively related to critical health literacy (10.47±2.56) and functional health literacy (9.14±3.74). The result of multiple regression analysis showed that only functional health literacy was a better predictor of self-care behaviors in patients with heart failure (β=0.30, P=0.014).
Conclusion: The findings showed that functional health literacy was an important predictor of self-care behaviors among patients with heart failure. It seems necessary to design effective interventions in order to improve patients’ skills for analyzing functional information and decision making in self-care.