Medication Error Reporting

Exploration of nurses’ knowledge, attitudes and perceived barriers toward medication error reporting in tertiary health care facility: qualitative study
Abstract
Medication error reporting (MER) is an effective way used to identify the causes of MEs and to take the actions prevent repeating them in future. The underreporting of MEs is a major challenge which faced all MER systems. This study aimed to explore nurses’ knowledge towards ME reporting, to determine nurses’ attitude towards ME reporting and to investigate the perceived barriers and facilitators towards ME reporting among nurse. 23 nurses were interviewed on June 2015 using semi-structured interview guide. Saturation point was reached after 21 interviews, All interviews were audio

Regarding this, there were two different opinions: first, some nurses insisted that they do not need any encouragement from others because they thought the MER is an integral part of their responsibility; on the contrary, other nurses welcomed the encouragement by other health practitioners such as a doctor, matron, or even their colleagues.
“There is no need to encourage us because this is our duity” (12)

“The sister in charge encouraged me to report.”(N9)

“Actually, among us, we as nurses encourage each other to report errors; also the sister in charge encourages us to do that” (N8)

Few nurses highlighted the incentives as an effective way to encourage nurses to be more meticulous to report MEs.
“Giving monetary rewards to the nurses.”(N3)

The confidentiality of the reporting form is an important factor, some of them preferred to fill anonymously to avoid the embarrassment and being reprimanded by the authorities.
“I prefer to fill the form with no names and it is better not to include names.” (N2)

“I think as long as they can ensure the confidentiality of the person who reported, we will feel safe”(N9)

The interviewees claimed that they do not fear losing their job, but they fear from the patient’s reactions if the ME was revealed to them. Also, they fear from the nurse managers and matron’s reaction against the reporters as they will be blamed for their MEs. This will have a negative impact on the number of reported errors. Such phenomena are consistent with the previous studies (Lin & Ma, 2009; Martowirono et al., 2012) Lin & Ma reported that around two-third of the participants were worried about getting punished, taking the medical responsibility and loss of patient’s trust. Strategies like providing blame free reporting culture, as well as using anonymous reporting forms could be dramatically helpful to subside the fear feeling among the