The relationship between incidence of medication errors and nurse's professional commitment

Medication errors are the most common errors that threaten patient safety, increase patients mortality, and hospital costs. This study investigated the relationship between the incidences of medication errors and nurse’s professional commitment. This is a cross-sectional, descriptive-analytic study. Through a stratified sampling method, 300 nurses were selected. Data were collected by a three-part questionnaire consisted of demographic data, professional commitment scale and medication errors questionnaire. Data were analyzed on SPSS software using descriptive and statistics and Pearson's correlation coefficient. The participants were between 22-50 years old and the majorities of them were women (86.7%) and married (64%). The mean of medication errors score for each nurses in recent 3 months was 15.11 and the score of professional commitment was 86 (high commitment). The relationship between error incidence and nurse’s professional commitment was not statistically significant (p=0.320). Thus it can be concluded that there is no significant difference in the incidence of medication errors between both low and high professional committed nurses.