Barriers to medical error reporting

Abstract

Background:This study was conducted to explore the prevalence of medical error underreporting and associated barriers.Methods:This cross-sectional study was performed from September to December 2012. Five hospitals, affiliated with Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, in Hamedan, Iran were investigated. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Participants consisted of physicians, nurses, midwives, residents, interns, and staffs of radiology and laboratory departments.Results:Overall, 50.26% of subjects had committed but not reported medical errors. The main reasons mentioned for underreporting were lack of effective medical error reporting system (60.0%), lack of proper reporting form (51.8%), lack of peer supporting a person who has committed an error (56.0%), and lack of personal attention to the importance of medical errors (62.9%). The rate of committing medical errors was higher in men (71.4%), age of 50–40 years (67.6%), less-experienced personnel (58.7%), educational level of MSc (87.5%), and staff of radiology department (88.9%).Conclusions:This study outlined the main barriers to reporting medical errors and associated factors that may be helpful for healthcare organizations in improving medical error reporting as an essential component for patient safety enhancement.

Awareness and attitude about patient safety among health professionals in Arar, Saudi Arabia

“…This was associated with lower scores for the teamwork across the unit. This is in accordance with other studies [26,27]. However, the reverse was reported in other published data [28].…”

Legal consequences, measures of prevention and reduction of medical malpractice cases (errors)

“…As Paul A. Glack states, it is impossible to completely advert or minimise the characteristic human feature to make mistakes as regards medical malpractice cases and errors just by making efforts in fulfilling personal professional duties on the part of every particular doctor. The system of medical services should be arranged so that it could complicate, reduce chances of undue actions to be done, and, in contrast, increase opportunities of due actions to be done by applying computer technologies [9]. The statement by I.V.…”

A resident-led initiative to improve patient safety event reporting in an internal medicine residency program

“…Although barriers to event reporting have been well described in the literature [ 20 , 21 ], the incidence and type of barriers may vary across institutions based on safety culture, policies, and event reporting systems. We believe the success of our program was reliant on the initial assessment of our own institution’s perceived barriers specifically faced by IM resident trainees.…”

“…The survey was developed by the authors and designed to assess resident physicians’ perceptions of specific barriers to event reporting at Stony Brook University Hospital. Each question was chosen after careful review and deliberation of well-publicized work in this area [ 20 ]. The sixth question allowed residents to select their top three reasons for not reporting an error or free text their reason for not contributing to event reporting systems ( Table 1 ).…”