Abstract
Aim
Knowledge about nurses’ error perception is crucial for establishing a sustainable risk management. This paper presents categories and frequencies of errors as identified by nurses. The cross-sectional study results provide further knowledge for professional and organizational development.
Subject and methods
Data from 1,100 German nurses working in 30 hospitals and 46 nursing homes were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. This paper firstly presents results from a content analysis of nurses’ descriptions of errors and, secondly, results on frequencies of predefined nursing errors (closed-ended, ordinal frequency estimation). Thirdly, it compares the answers of hospital nurses with those of nurses employed in nursing homes and finally it compares answers of participant groups defined by sex or migration background.
Results
In the open-ended section, errors described by 60.5 % of the participants concerned medical diagnosis/therapy. 20.7 % had experienced errors in hands-on care, while errors in communication with patients were noted by 3.7 %. In contrast, when offering predefined activities in the questionnaire’s closed-ended part, indicated frequencies of errors stressed issues of hands-on care and documentation. Significant differences exist between participants from both settings regarding direct care and relationship building. Sex and migration background were related to frequency estimations.
Conclusions
Findings point to shortened professional perspectives in the debates on risk and safety. This might lower nurses’ compliance in risk management systems. The influence of health professionals’ sex and migration background on their error perception needs further exploration. Field specific approaches for error prevention are needed.
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Notes
The external institute was included into the preparation of this article in person of Ronja Foraita.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Funding
This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Grant Number 01GT0607.
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Habermann, M., Foraita, R. & Cramer, H. Categories of errors and error frequencies as identified by nurses: results of a cross-sectional study in German nursing homes and hospitals. J Public Health 21, 3–13 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-012-0531-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-012-0531-x