Barriers and Facilitators of Reporting Medical Errors in a Hospital: A Qualitative Study

Reporting human errors in healthcare agencies is often accompanied by embarrassment and the fear of punishment; such errors can highlight motivation, the lack of attention, and enough education. Thus, there is a tendency to hide them. This study aimed to investigate the barriers and facilitators of reporting medical errors in hospitals.

A qualitative study design with a conventional content analysis approach was used. The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 13 employers working in the hospital in Qom Province, Iran. Interviews were transcribed and finally analyzed through conventional content analysis. Accordingly, its results were presented in a theme, subcategories, and categories.

Our findings indicated that the employees had a multilevel perspective of medical error, viewing facilitators, and barriers to a medical error concerning several system levels. The barriers to medical error included individual, organizational, and social barriers. The facilitators of medical errors consisted of education, organizational, and cultural facilities.

Findings suggested the need for support and security for employees and consideration of facilities to prevent the nonreporting of errors. Managers must provide the necessary personal, professional, and legal support to employees to remove barriers to encourage them to report the mistakes effectively