Search Results (3)

Background: Medical errors are common, and in particular, medication errors are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in healthcare. Nurses must disclose errors to build trust and ensure patient safety despite communication barriers and fear of reprisals. Truthful documentation and better collaboration can improve patient outcomes. Aim: The aim of this study was to assess barriers to error disclosure among nurses in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted in the months of June and August 2024 using a convenience sample of 255 nurses at King Fahad Hospital (KFH), Hofuf. A self-administered questionnaire that contained socio-demographic questions, as well as the Barriers to Error Disclosure Assessment (BEDA) tool, was deployed. Results: The majority of the sample were female (92.2%) and Bachelor’s degree holders (80.8%) who had 1–5 or 6–10 years of experience, representing 45.5% and 29.0% of the sample, respectively. When medical errors occur, only 18% of the nurses disclosed them to patients and their families, and 34.5% of the respondents disclosed medical errors to another team of healthcare professionals. The types of barriers to error disclosure were identified as relating to confidence and knowledge barriers, institutional barriers, psychological barriers, and financial concern barriers. The overall barrier score had an average of 63%. The barriers with the highest scores were those relating to psychological barriers (68.2%), followed by institutional barriers (66.5%) and financial concern barriers (64.5%). Conclusions: Targeted interventions are required for addressing the identified specific needs to support healthcare providers, specifically nurses. New regulations and policy changes are crucial for training programs implementation, enhancing safety culture, and tackling job-related insecurities to minimize barriers to error disclosure and ultimately provide better patient care quality. Further investigations may include a different approach, and it is recommended to provide deeper insights into nurse experiences. Full article

Prescription and administration of pro re nata (PRN) medications has remained a poorly discussed area of the international literature regarding ethical tenets influencing this type of medication practice. In this commentary, ethical tenets of PRN medicines management from the clinical perspective based on available international literature and published research have been discussed. Three categories were developed by the authors for summarising review findings as follows: ‘benefiting the patient’, ‘making well-informed decision’, and ‘follow up assessment’ as pre-intervention, through-intervention, and post-intervention aspects, respectively. PRN medicines management is mainly intertwined with the ethical tenets of beneficence, nonmaleficence, dignity, autonomy, justice, informed consent, and error disclosure. It is a dynamic process and needs close collaboration between healthcare professionals especially nurses and patients to prevent unethical practice. Full article

Patient safety is crucial for the sustainability of the healthcare system. However, this may be jeopardized by the high prevalence of practice errors, particularly in residential long-term care. Development of improvement initiatives depends on full reporting and disclosure of practice errors. This systematic review aimed to understand factors that influence disclosing and reporting practice errors by nurses in residential long-term care settings. A systematic review using an integrative design was conducted. Electronic databases including PubMed (including Medline), Scopus, CINAHL, Embase, and Nordic and Spanish databases were searched using keywords relating to reporting and disclosing practice errors by nurses in residential long-term care facilities to retrieve articles published between 2010 and 2019. The search identified five articles, including a survey, a prospective cohort, one mixed-methods and two qualitative studies. The review findings were presented under the categories of the theoretical domains of Vincent’s framework for analyzing risk and safety in clinical practice: ‘patient’, ‘healthcare provider’, ‘task’, ‘work environment’, and ‘organisation & management’. The review findings highlighted the roles of older people and their families, nurses’ individual responsibilities, knowledge and collaboration, workplace atmosphere, and support by nurse leaders for reporting and disclosing practice errors, which had implications for improving the quality of healthcare services in residential long-term care settings. Full article