Journal of

Background: Reporting of  medication errors  leads to saving Patients &apossafety and also is counted as a valuable information source for further prevention of mistake in future.  The aim of this study was to determine the reasons for refusing to report medication errors from the viewpoints of nurses.

Material and Methods:In this descriptive study, 140 of 200 nurses who were employees of Baharlo hospital of Tehran participated in the study (response rate = 70%). Data were collected through a questionnaire. Test- retest analysis conducted for measuring reliability of the questionnaire and content and face validity of the instrument confirmed by key statisticians and methodologists. . SPSS software and descriptive statistics were used for analyzing the collected data. 

Results:Our findings indicate that the reasons of not reporting medication errors were Management factors (3.68 ± 1.12), Fear of reporting outcomes (3.09 ± 1.68) and Process related to reporting (2.73± 1.26). Management factors domain was the major cause of refuse of reporting medication errors. 

Conclusion:Since medication errors seem to be unavoidable, suppression, decreasing medication error depends on using a systematic approach with emphasis on management and nursing care. 

Background: Patient safety is one of main indicators in quality control of health services. The most prevalent threatening cause of patient safety is medical errors especially medication errors. This study aimed at assessing the rate and type of nurses’ medication errors.

Materials and Methods: This study was a descriptive – analytical one which performed in a non-public hospital in East North Country. The studied hospital has 180 active beds in the fields such as general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, infants, cardiology, angiography, CCU, ICU, and NICU. Due to limited population, all the nurses in the hospital (97 nurses) were participated in the study. The instrument was a self-designed questionnaire which was composed of two main parts (demographic data and medication errors information). Its reliability and validity was confirmed. Data were analyzed by SPSS software version 15 using t- test and ANOVA.

Results: Among the studied nurses, 76 nurses (78.3%) were female and 21 (21.7%) were male. The mean of age and work experience of participants were 29.3 and 8.7 respectively. The most frequent of medication errors included medication without prescription 136(23.7%), lack of attention to medical complications 134(23.4%), Giving the medication at the wrong time 128(22.4%). The lowest common of medication errors reported as using expired date medication4(0.7%), wrong medication 5(0.9%) and  non administered medication 6(1.1%).

Conclusion: The nursing managers should be consider more attention to reduce medication errors by implementing Training classes, improving nurse's processes and promoting attitudes towards importance of patient safety.

Background: Patient safety is one of the key principals to the trust in any health care system nowadays. Medication errors, as a key safety threatening factors, could increase patients’ length of stay and healthcare costs in hospitals and might lead into injury and finally death. Therefore, this study seeks to compare the incidence and proposed solutions of Iran and selected countries in order for preventing medication errors.

Materials and Methods: This applicable study is a review article searching in such databases as SID, IranMedex, Pubmed, and Scopus to identify and select its related papers. At last, 25 studies were considered for this study.

Results: According to the results of studies, shortage of nurses, nurses’ inexperience, job stress, physicians’ handwriting and lack of information on medications were the highly frequent incidence causes. Training courses on medicine dispensing and hands-on training were the most important solution.

Conclusion: Given the existing gap between the medication errors incidence rate of Iran and selected countries, the latter’s experiences such as transparency and responsibility and active role of hospital pharmacies could be utilized by the former.

Introduction: Medication process to patients is one of the most important tasks of nurses and doing in correct way can play a significant role in patient safety. This issue is the most significant part of quality care which consisted of patient safety as the impotant element. Medication errors are the main threatening factors of patients' safety. This study aimed at assessing the causes of medication errors from the nurses' viewpoints

Materials and Methods: This study was a descriptive-sectional-analytical one which was done in 2013. The study population consisted of 232 nursing staff of Abadan hospitals(Imam khomeini,Taleghani,Shahidbeheshti ,17shahrivar) which were covered by Ahvaz University of Medical Sciences,Oil Company and Social Security Organization ,respectively. Study instrument was a two part questionnaire including demographic - occupational information and causes of medication errors in 28 items in four fields (nurse, ward, nursing management and pharmaceutical causes).Content validity of questionnaire provided by review of related papers and experts'openion and required correction was performed.reliability of questionnaire was estimated 0.91 using Cronbach's alpha method.

Results: the most important causes of medication errors included shortage of nurses in propration to patient(%44),compression of work in ward(%36.2),fatigue due to over work(%35.8),illegible physician oder(%24.5),anxiety and stress due to work(%25),noise in ward(%22.4),nurse dissatisfaction of salary(%29.7) and similarity in medicine shape(%14.7) respectively.

Conclusion: Management causes such as nursing shortage, organizational factors such as compression of work in ward and some factors like nurses' fatigue had the most effect on occurance of medication errors among nurses. Thus, organizational processes reform and hospital organization to improve service quality and patient safety in order to resolve nurses' problems.