AN ANALYSIS OF NURSES' PERCEPTIONS ABOUT THE CAUSES OF MEDICATION ERRORS AND OF THE REASONS FOR NOT REPORTING THE CAUSES OF ERRORS

Abstract

The study was conducted to examine nurses' perceptions of the causes of medication errors and their reasons for not reporting the causes of errors. The research is descriptive study conducted in the children's hospital section of the City Hospitals in Ankara. Research data were collected between June and July 2021. In the research, the sampling method with a known population was used and 287 nurses participated in the study. Data were collected using the Medication Administration Error Scale. Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance, simple and multiple regression analysis were employed in the analysis of the data.  The nurses' perceptions of the causes of drug administration errors and the perception levels of the reasons for not reporting errors were found to be above the average. While the nurses' failure to report medication errors accounts for 26.5% of the causes of error (ß=0.517), disagreement over the error for 30.6% of the score (ß=0.555). Managerial nurses' perceptions of medication errors and levels of not reporting errors are lower than those of service nurses. The average of susceptibility to error occurrence of shift workers is higher than that of those who work only during the day and at night.  How medication errors occur and the definition of the error is effective on the reasons why nurses do not report medication errors. While working position affects drug errors and non-reporting levels, work periods increase the susceptibility to error formation.