Assessing barriers to medical errors reporting among clinical staff members of teaching hospitals affiliated with Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran - 2016
Background and Aims: One of the most important issues in the health sector is quality of care. Error reporting is essential to prevent errors and to learn from them. The aim of this study was to identify barriers to errors reporting in order to eliminate these barriers and to improve and encourage error reporting amongclinical staff members.Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 419 clinical staff members of teaching hospitals under the auspices of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences were selected using the multistage sampling method. The instrument for data collection was a researcher-developed questionnaire containing29 items and its validity and reliability were confirmed. Data were analyzed using SPSS 20 software and statistical tests. Ethical issues such as confidentiality of studied community were all considered.Results: The overall mean of barriers to errors reporting in our study was 3.13 of 5 which was at moderate level. Fear of error reporting consequences with mean score of 3.37 and staff attitudes with mean score of 2.70 were identified as the most important and less important barriers to error reporting. There wassignificant relationship between barriers to error reporting with staffs, educational level and their working shift (p < 0.05) so that barriers to error reporting was higher among physicians (3.39) and night shift (3.22) workers.Conclusion: The main barrier to error reporting was identified as the fear of error reporting consequences. Managers should have a nonpunitive approach to errors in the hospital so staff would report their errors voluntarily. By increasing the available data through error reporting, learning from errors is increased, and changes in hospital processes occurs.Keywords: Medical error, Error reporting, patient safety, Hospita
