Examining the correlation between medical error tendencies and burnout levels of the nurses working at surgical clinics

Examining the Correlation Between Medical Error Tendencies and Burnout Levels of the Nurses Working at Surgical Clinics Nurses are healthcare professionals who are directly in charge of protection and promotion of health, improve the quality of life and meet the daily needs of the patients that they can not carry out by themselves. This study was conducted with the methods of descriptive and cross-sectional research on the purpose of examining the correlation between medical error tendencies and burnout levels of the nurses working at surgical clinics. A total of 338 nurses working at surgical clinics of three main training and research hospitals situated in Ankara attended to the research conducted between the dates of November 11, 2015 to September 20, 2016. The Maslach Burnout Inventory Manual, Malpractice Trend Scale in Nursing and questionnaire were benefited during the research. Questions were asked to the participants by using the method of face-to-face. It has been detected that 82,20 percent of the nurses attending the study have heard about the concept of medical error before, 80,9 percent of those have attended a training about medical error and 55,0 percent of those think that medical errors are preventable. The highest scores of nurses are applications of medication and transfusion (4,47±0,538), while their lowest scores are on the topics of following-up of patients and material safety (3,99±0,686) according to the subdimensions of malpractice trend scale in nursing. According to the subdimension scores of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, there aren't any statistically significant findings on the topics of sex, marital status, childbearing or sickness (p>0,05). Although there isn't any statistically significant correlation between the subdimensions of emotional exhaustion and medical error tendencies (p>0,05), a statistically significant correlation detected between the subdimensions of desensitisation and decrease in personal success with medical error tendencies (p<0,05). As a result, a partial association has been observed between medical error tendencies and burnout levels of the nurses working at surgical clinics. Keywords: Burnout Syndrome, Medical Error, Surgical Nursing