Identifying the Factors Affecting the Incidence of Medication Errors of Nurses in Teaching Hospitals of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

Medication errors are one of the major causes of injury to patients while receiving medical care. This study aimed  to investigate the effective causes of medication errors in nurses in educational hospitals affiliated with Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.

This descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted in 2020 on 340 nurses from 10 educational  hospitals affiliated to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. The data collection tool was a questionnaire. Data were analyzed using t-test, ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient were analyzed using SPSS23 software .

According to the results, human factors have been the most important factor in the occurrence of medication errors. The most important causes of medication errors with respect to human, managerial and environmental factors include fatigue due to overwork (3.13 ± 1.16), method of supervision (3.06 ± 0.98) ,and heavy workload (3.00 ± 1.19), respectively. There was a statistically significant relationship between human factors and  age (p = 0.024), gender (p = 0.013), employment relationship (p = 0.016), and marital status (p = 0.027), and between management factors and employment relationship (p = 0.034) and the number of patients under observation (p = 0.011).

Considering the most important causes of medication errors, including fatigue due to overload, supervision methods, and heavy workload, using strategies to reduce fatigue due to workload, such as balancing nurses' work shifts and also holding workshops on supervision methods is recommended in order to improve the level of managerial competencies of nurses.