Journal of

Background and Aim: Medication errors make up a large portion of medical errors that mostly happen in hospitals. To prevent medication errors, it is essential to reach an appropriate understanding regarding with their causes and reporting especially among nurses. The purpose of this study was to determine the reasons of medication errors and the causes of not error reporting from nurses’ viewpoints. 

Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive analytical cross-sectional study conducted in year 2013. The study population were nurses working in different working shifts in special and sub-special pediatric hospitals in Tehran. A sample of 294 nurses recruited using a stratified non randomized sampling approach. The corrected Gladstone questionnaire with appropriate validity and reliability was used. The data were analyzed by descriptive (frequency, mean and standard deviation) and analytical statistics (Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis) using SPSS version 16.

Results: The most important reasons of medication errors were tiredness of nurses, wrong dose prescription by the physicians and illegible prescriptions. Fear of the nursing manager's reaction was the main obstacle to reporting medication errors in the view of 74.9% of nurses. The nurses estimated that only 42.52% of all the medicinal errors were reported.

Conclusion: Raising awareness regarding with the types and causes of medication errors and their reporting and implementing the relevant intervention to address these causes should be established in hospitals in particular in pediatrics wards.