Background: Underreporting of medication administering errors (MAEs) is a threat to the quality of nursing care. The reasons for MAEs are complex and vary by health professional and institution.
Aims: The purpose of this study was to explore the prevalence of MAEs and the willingness of nurses to report them.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted involving a survey of 14 medical surgical hospitals in southern Taiwan. Nurses voluntarily participated in this study. A structured questionnaire was completed by 605 participants. Data were collected from February 1, 2005 to March 15, 2005 using the following instruments: MAEs Unwillingness to Report Scale, Medication Errors Etiology Questionnaire, and Personal Features Questionnaire. One additional question was used to identify the willingness of nurses to report medication errors: "When medication errors occur, should they be reported to the department?" This question helped to identify the willingness or lack thereof, to report incident errors.
Results: The results indicated that 66.9% of the nurses reported experiencing MAEs and 87.7% of the nurses had a willingness to report the MAEs if there were no consequences for reporting. The nurses' willingness to report MAEs differed by job position, nursing grade, type of hospital, and hospital funding. The final logistic regression model demonstrated hospital funding to be the only statistically significant factor. The odds of a willingness to report MAEs increased 2.66-fold in private hospitals (p = 0.032, CI = 1.09 to 6.49), and 3.28 in nonprofit hospitals (p = 0.00, CI = 1.73 to 6.21) when compared to public hospitals.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates that reporting of MAEs should be anonymous and without negative consequences in order to monitor and guide improvements in hospital medication systems.